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2. ^iM"-.e>'L_ 



THE MOVEMENT ON THE PARIS BOULEVARDS DERIVES MUCH OF 
ITS PICTURESQUENESS FROM THE PONDEROUS OMNIBUS 



Frontispiece 



SENSATIONS OF PARIS 



BY 



ROWLAND STRONG 

AUTHOR OF "WHERE AND HOW TO DINE IN PARIS," ETC. 



WITH FIFTY-SIX ILLUSTRATIONS 




LONDON 
JOHN LONG, LIMITED 

NORRIS STREET, HAYMARKET 

MCMXII 



-^0 






TO 

MY AMERICAN FRIEND 

JULES MONTANT 

TO REMIND HIM OF 

MANY A PLEASANT TRAMP AND 

MERRY MEAL 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

I. THE SPIRIT OF THE BOULEVARD - "15 

II. A PARISIAN MARRIAGE - - - "31 

III. THE PANORAMA AND COLOUR OF PARIS - $2 

IV. ALL PARIS - - - - - 66 
V. THE ODOURS OF PARIS - - - 78 

VI. ON THE DECAY OF FRENCH MANNERS - 95 

VII. PERSONALLY CONDUCTED . - - i02 

VIII. THE MOVEMENT OF PARIS _ - - 115 

IX. THE NEWS OF THE DAY IN PARIS - - I32 

X. AMERICANS IN PARIS - - - - 142 

XI. THE SHADOWS OF PARIS - _ - 159 

XII. A PARISIAN HOLIDAY-MAKING - - - 175 

XIII. THE VOICE OF PARIS - - - - I95 

XIV. A GREAT PARIS RESTAURANT - - - 211 
XV. THE WILD-FLOWERS OF PARIS - - - 225 

XVI. VANISHING PARIS — I9IO - . _ 24O 

XVII. A FRENCH SOLDIER'S MOTHER - - - 262 

INDEX - - - - - - 285 



IX 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 

FACING PAGE 

THE MOVEMENT ON THE PARIS BOULEVARDS DERIVES 
MUCH OF ITS PICTURESQUENESS FROM THE PON- 
DEROUS OMNIBUS - - - frontispiece 
THE BOULEVARD BY NIGHT - - - - l6 . 

MONSIEUR ERNEST LAJEUNESSE, THE KING OF THE 

BOULEVARD - - - - - 26 

" LE PENSEUR," THAT SPHINX-HEARTED GARGOYLE 

OF NOTRE DAME - - - - 26 

MADAME DUVAL AT THE DOOR OF THE COOPER'S SHOP 38 
SIGNING THE REGISTER AT MADEMOISELLE DUVAL'S 

WEDDING - - - - - - 38 

MONSIEUR LAJEUNESSE'S COLLECTION OF MINIA- 
TURES - - - - - - 50 

THE SACRE CCEUR AT MONTMARTRE - - - $2 , 

THE WEDDING-PARTY AT THE CASCADE IN THE BOIS 

DE BOULOGNE - - - - - 60 

MONSIEUR LE CONCIERGE - - - - 69 

THE PANORAMA OF PARIS FROM MONTMARTRE - JO 

THE " GRAND SEIZE " IN THE CAFE ANGLAIS - 74 

xi 



xii LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 

FACING PAGE 

THE FRIED-FISH AND MUSSEL BOOTH - - 82 / 

APPLE FRITTERS ON THE FORTIFICATIONS - - 82 y 

IN ITS BIG RED RECEPTACLE, OH, MOST PITIFUL ! 

STANDS THE POT-AU-FEU - - - ' ^5 ^ 

THE ENTRANCE TO MADAME VAUQUER'S PENSION {Le 

Pere Gorioi — balzac) - - - - 94^ 

THE COURTYARD OF THE PENSION VAUQUER {Le Pcve 

Goriot — BALZAc) - - - - - 94|^ 

A MURAL PAINTING BY GAVARNI AT THE ROCHER DE 

CANCALE ------ 100,^, 

HE, TOO, SPECIALIZES IN THE NIGHT ATTRACTIONS OF 

THE " GAY CITY " . _ - - 104 

" VOILA LES COOKS !" . . - - ICQ/ 

PARIS IS HIS IDOL ----- m ^ 

HER CLOTHES COST HER NOTHING - - - 112 ^f 

THE CAFE WAITERS ARE SERVING " BOCKS " ON THE RUN 122 / 
THE STATELY MOVEMENT OF THE FUNERAL STOPS ALL 

OTHER TRAFFIC - - - - - 122 ^ 

BRANCHES OF CONSECRATED BOXWOOD ARE SOLD 

OUTSIDE ALL THE CHURCHES - - - I34 , 

" IL ARRIVE, IL ARRIVE, LE MAQUEREAU !" - - I34 

THERE IS NO ONE POSSESSED OF A BAD COPY OF 
RUBENS WHO IS NOT LONGING FOR AN " AMERI- 
CAIN RICHISSIME " - - - - I44 .• 

A POET RECITING IN A MONTMARTRE CAFfi - - I44 . 

A DESERTED GRAVE IN THE OLD BOIS DE BOULOGNE 

CEMETERY - - - - - I58 ' 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS xiii 

FACING PAGE 

THE BROKEN CROSS IN THE OLD BOIS DE BOULOGNE 

CEMETERY .... - 158. 
EARLY MORNING SHADOWS IN THE RED MILL QUARTER 164 
THE MEDIEVAL SHADOWS OF THE CONCIERGERIE - 164 , 
THE SEINE BANKS, WITH NOTRE DAME IN THE DIS- 
TANCE, AND ANGLERS - - - - 174^ 

YOU WILL FIND YOURSELF STANDING ON A WORN 

MAT _..... 177 

THE STREET HOARDINGS ARE COVERED WITH ADVER- 
TISEMENTS OF SEASIDE RESORTS - - - 180 
MADELEINE IS NOW SEVENTEEN - - - I9O , 
A DESPERATE SCENE OCCURS WITH THE BAGGAGE 

CLERK ------ 192 

A HAWKER OF WILD HEATHER AT MONTMARTRE - I94 

THE " MUGUET " BRINGS LUCK - - - I94 

THE SPARROWS ARE TAME ENOUGH TO TAKE FOOD 

FROM THE HAND . - _ - 202 

THE HOUSE WITH A SECRET STAIRCASE INTO THE CATA- 
COMBS ------ 202 

A BLIND WOMAN WITH A HURDY-GURDY - - 210 

A TUNEFUL BUT BETATTERED INFANT WITH AN 

ACCORDION ----- 210 

THE CAFE ANGLAIS, WITH ALPHONSE, THE HEAD- 
WAITER ------ 216 

THE CELLARS OF THE CAFE ANGLAIS, SHOWING THE 

FAMOUS ORANGE-TREE ^ - - - 220 

THE " BIBLIOTHfiQUE," WHERE RUSSIAN GRAND DUKES 

KEEP THEIR SILVER PLATE . - - 224 



V 



xiv LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 

FACING PAGE 

SELLING WILD DAFFODILS IN THE STREETS OF PARIS 232/ 
A PARISIAN PICKING DAFFODILS IN THE FOREST OF 

SENART ------ 232 ' 

A PARIS EDITION OF " THE HOUSE OF USHER " - 242 . 

THE GREAT PORTE-COCHERE HAS THE AIR OF A DES- 
PERATE AND STURDY BEGGAR - - - 242 
LA GUIMARD's grave, SEPARATED FROM THE REST OF 

THE BOIS DE BOULOGNE BY A GRILLED MOAT - 254 .. 
IT WAS HERE, IN THE RUE DE FIGUIER, THAT RABELAIS 

DIED ------ 254 

THE SHADOW OF THE CROSS - - - - 264 

CHATEAUBRIAND'S HOUSE AT AULNAY - - 264 ^ 

THE GARDEN AT AUTEUIL, WHEREIN MOLIERE WALKED 

AND MEDITATED ----- 274 ' 

HERE STOOD MOLIJ;RE's HOUSE - . - 274 

VIEW FROM NOTRE DAME ALONG THE SEINE, WITH ITS 

SPARKLING BRIDGES - - - - 280 ' 



SENSATIONS OF PARIS 

CHAPTER I 

THE SPIRIT OF THE BOULEVARD 

We had ordered coupes Jack, but the waiter 
declared that but two ices remained, of which 
one was a coupe Jack, and this my companion, 
a young Cambridge don, expressed a preference 
for. I contented myself with a glace melon, 
which, shaped and coloured like a slice of cante- 
loup, was delicately flavoured as to its inner 
portion with the juice of fresh melon, and had a 
broad green rind of pistachio. This was abso- 
lutely the last ice — the last thing — served at 
Tortoni's. Tortoni, with tears upon his face, 
was helping the waiter to put up the shutters. 
It was midnight, the hour at which the historic 
Boulevard cafe was advertised to be closed for 
ever. We alone lingered upon the doomed 
premises — Marshal MacMahon had just left — 
and it was not the least tragic part of the 
situation that the only hands stretched out in 
sympathy to the grief-stricken Tortoni at that 

15 



i6 SENSATIONS OF PARIS 

funereal moment were those of foreigners who 
were in no sense of the term boulevardiers. 

*' Messieurs," said Tortoni, when we asked 
him why it had become necessary to close the 
famous establishment, " que voulez-vous ? Le 
Boulevard se meurt !" (What will you ? The 
Boulevard dies !) The mot has been quoted 
since by others than ourselves who were not 
present when it was uttered. It forms the 
burden of the lamentations of many an old 
boulevardier who mistakes his own senility for 
that of the Boulevard. Tortoni' s is now a 
boot-shop. Once it was the rendezvous of all 
that was boulevardier in Paris. It was there 
that the brilliant journalist and author, Aurelien 
Scholl, held, in the late eighties, the undisputed 
sceptre of Parisian esprit — of wit in the true 
Boulevard sense. More than one familiar figure 
— that of Scholl among others — disappeared 
from the Boulevard after the closing of Tortoni' s, 
but only to be replaced by successors not less 
brilliant or worthy. For the Boulevard bends, 
but it does not break. It surrenders, but it 
does not die. It bends architecturally in a grace- 
ful curve, following the line of the old city 
ramparts of pre-Revolutionary times. Note that 
only that portion of the Boulevards extending 
from the Madeleine to the Faubourg Montmartre 




THE BOULEVARD BY NIGHT 



To face page i6 



THE SPIRIT OF THE BOULEVARD 17 

constitutes the Boulevard proper. Sentimen- 
tally it bends with equal grace in the directions 
of new persons and new things and new ideas — 
with its most gallant bow toward the American 
woman, whose claim to rival the Parisienne in 
beauty, esprit, and deportment, it frankly 
acknowledges ; enthusiastically toward the auto- 
mobile and the " Metropolitain," which are 
transforming its historic thoroughfares ; loyally 
toward the entente cordiale with Great Britain, 
which has revolutionized its politics and soft- 
ened the tone of its voice. 

I have said that it surrenders. It surren- 
ders old and cherished prejudices to modern 
arguments. It has something of the apathy of 
Nature in the presence of the changes wrought 
by Time. Its youthful suppleness never deserts 
it. A mysterious force, constantly renewing its 
vital saps and juices, preserves it from decay. 

Whole quarters of Paris come and go. The 
Palais Royal, formerly the elysium of Parisian 
gaiety and dissipation ; the Place des Vosges, 
where the nobles of Louis XIII.'s Court had 
their town residences, are but phantoms of 
irrevocable splendours. Grass and the street 
gamin have invaded their echoing pavements 
and crumbling colonnades. The aristocratic 
faubourgs of St. Honore and St. Germain, with 

2 



i8 SENSATIONS OF PARIS 

their old-time magnificence, their proud, closed- 
in air, their territorial wealth of gardens, are 
slowly fading away. The encroaching wave of 
democracy narrows every year their flower- 
strewn boundaries. The Ternes, after a short 
chrysalis existence as a slum, has blossomed 
out into a suburban Mayfair. Montparnasse, 
vexed at an invasion of Anglo-Saxon artists 
and art critics, packed up one day its colour- 
boxes and easels, and transported itself bodily 
to Montmartre. Even in the heart of the city, 
revolutions and upheavals have been so com- 
plete and thorough that the Paris of Balzac is, 
with the exception of the Boulevard, already a 
thing of the past. Who would recognize in that 
grimy wine-shop in the populous Rue Montor- 
gueil the once famous Rocher de Cancale, where 
Rastignac, with the other witty exquisites of 
the Illusions Perdiies, was accustomed to dine 
at the then fashionable hour of five ? Certain 
mural caricatures by Gavarni, which cannot be 
sold, being painted on the plastered wall, alone 
survive of its former glories. But Monsieur 
Pecune, its old proprietor, might still have been 
met with on the Boulevard a couple of years ago, 
pondering the memories of the great men and 
the great festins of the past (as a child he had 
known the author of the Comedie Humaine). 



THE SPIRIT OF THE BOULEVARD 19 

Paul de Kock has left us a picture of the 
Boulevard as he knew it in the thirties, and in 
its essence it has not changed. He noted that 
the Boulevard des Italiens has been renamed 
more than once, chiefly for political reasons. 
But even when it was known as the Boulevard 
de Gand, in honour of Louis XVIIL, who was 
at Ghent when he recovered the French throne, 
and earlier still when it was called the Boulevard 
Coblentz on equally trivial grounds, it was the 
chief sensory nerve, as it were, in the complex 
anatomy of Paris. Its pavements were fur- 
nished with chairs (since relegated to the fronts, 
or " terraces/' of the cafes), which in fine 
weather accommodated all the brilliant gossips 
of the town, of both sexes, who met to discuss 
the political situation, the latest fashion, the 
latest book, the newest theatrical star, the latest 
on dit, and one another. From the shock of 
these contending ideas, from the multicoloured 
medley of points of view, of bon mots, of witty 
or scandalous anecdotes, and the intercourse of 
the curiously varied personalities grouped with 
them, were day by day and hour by hour 
evolved the verdict and the edict of the Boule- 
vard. Cigar-smoking is no longer a questionable 
novelty, as it was in Paul de Kock's time, nor 
do elegant Parisiennes sweep the pavement with 



20 SENSATIONS OF PARIS 

their crinolines, but the mentality of the Boule- 
vard remains the same. 

The Boulevard survives because it is essential 
to Paris. The London parks have been de- 
scribed as the lungs of London. The Parisians, 
of whom so many are from Marseilles, are an 
outdoor - living people, and they have the 
loquacity of the South. The Boulevard is a 
needed outlet for their expansiveness. Its pave- 
ments are the widest in Paris. Its cafes and 
restaurants are the most numerous and best 
appointed. And if it be true that all roads 
lead to Rome, it may equally be said of the 
Boulevard that it is the highway to every living 
point of interest in Paris — to the Chamber of 
Deputies, the Presidential Palace, if you are 
moving westward ; to the Senate and the 
Pantheon if more aged and reposeful scenes 
beckon you. The ample proportions of the 
Boulevard are necessary to the Parisian for his 
gesticulations, and for the breadth of his ideas 
on moral, social, and political topics. Its 
avenues of luxuriant trees supply in summer 
a grateful shade for the lounger, the dreamer, 
and the talker. The Boulevard is the throat of 
Paris, and its palate as well. Nowhere are the 
nuances of French popular thought and feeling 
expressed with so much precision and authority 



THE SPIRIT OF THE BOULEVARD 21 

as on the Boulevard. Erudition, laborious 
scientific investigation, the high intellectual life, 
invest with a peculiar atmosphere of dignified 
and cloistered calm the old quarters of the 
Luxembourg and the Sorbonne, where the 
University professors mostly live. Here are the 
homes of composers, of painters, of sculptors, 
of novelists, of historians. Here are the intel- 
lectual cuisines or workshops of Paris. But 
there is little about them that is specifically 
Parisian. They have no welt-staedtisch or cos- 
mopolitan interests. Their specialism escapes 
immediate generalization. They are excen- 
tric. It is on the Boulevard that the delicate 
meats of the mind, prepared in the tranquil 
seclusion of these unassuming and inexpensive 
dependencies of the great city, are tasted and 
judged. 

The Boulevard makes and mars the reputation 
of a savant with the same imperial authority 
and assumption of omniscience that it applies to 
politics and the arts, to cooking and religion, to 
all subjects that come within the scope of human 
criticism. And inasmuch as Paris leads France, 
and the Boulevard inspires Paris, it is the opinion 
of the Boulevard which for the time being 
prevails. These judgments are often super- 
ficial ; they are based in many, if not most, 



22 SENSATIONS OF PARIS 

cases upon a lack of knowledge as complete 
as the arrogance which makes them possible ; 
but they constitute an accepted formula of the 
hour, a formula which, owing to the suppleness 
and force of survival inherent to the Boulevard, 
is never final. For the ignorance of the Boule- 
vard is immense, instinctive, and wilful. It is 
feminine both in its quality and in its compre- 
hensiveness, this capricious, elegant, and dis- 
tinguished ignorance which is at once the 
limitation and part of the unique charm of the 
Boulevard ; and I am not advancing too much 
when I say that the brain of the Boulevard is 
feminine, an intuitive, illogical, witty, and 
fascinating brain, set in the prettiest and the 
most mobile of heads. 

The Boulevard is a kingdom — an imperium in 
imperio — without any acknowledged king, but 
with a large number of pretenders to the throne. 
With the rise of the Republic in France, an 
aristocracy of intellect has taken the place of 
the old aristocracy of birth, and actually governs 
the country in its stead. A similar change has 
been effected on the Boulevard. The days of 
the dandies, of the titled noceurs led by the 
Due de Gramont-Caderousse, the Marquis of 
Hertford, Lord " Arsouille/' are over. Even 
the Maison Doree, on whose narrow staircase 



THE SPIRIT OF THE BOULEVARD 23 

the Duke of Hamilton, after a copious dinner, 
fell and broke his neck, has been swept away. 
One must go to Montmartre, to the Taverne du 
Tabarin (a far less aristocratic haunt, with none 
of the culinary attractions of the defunct Maison 
Doree), to find a similar staircase which can 
claim to have recently caused, under like cir- 
cumstances — though in what company ! — the 
death of an English peer. Half a century ago 
the title of " King of the Boulevard " would 
have been given to some great courtier and 
wealthy nobleman, a Morny or a Demidoff, 
whose equipage and outriders would have added 
a summer radiance to the Avenue de ITmpera- 
trice (now the Avenue du Bois de Boulogne), 
who would have been an habitue of the " grand 
sixteen," that famous dining-room at the Cafe 
Anglais where, on one occasion, Cora Pearl, the 
most extravagant demi-mondaine of her day, 
was served up, in the costume of Eve, on a silver 
platter. The automobile, with its waterproofs 
and goggles, has supplanted the brilliant 
equipages d la Daumont and the sumptuous 
liveries of the Imperial epoch. Seekers after 
mere sensual pleasure and riotous dissipation 
no longer have their needs supplied by the 
Boulevard ; they must go farther afield — to 
Maxim's, the Rat Mort, the Abbaye de Theleme, 



24 SENSATIONS OF PARIS 

to the Tabarin, where the jeunesse dorSe of the 
present generation repeat at less expense of 
either taste or money the wild junketings of 
their fathers and grandfathers. 

The Boulevard, if less given over than of 
yore to the worship of Mammon, is at the same 
time more Bohemian than it was, and thus 
truly reflects the most typical transfiguration 
which has taken place of recent years in the 
general aspect of French society. Ever since 
Gambetta established the republican principles 
of " graft " as the basis of the government of 
the country, it is from Bohemia that France 
has drawn her most representative public 
forces. Bohemia, which long ago conquered 
literature, art, and the press, is predominant 
in the Chamber, claims a goodly contingent 
in the Senate, and is encroaching upon the 
higher ranks of the army and navy. Already 
it disposes of most, if not all, of the chief offices 
of the magistracy and of the State. What more 
typically Bohemian careers could well be imag- 
ined, for instance, than that of the genial Monsieur 
Clemenceau, who so short a time ago was the 
most powerful Minister and the rnost influential 
statesman in France ? If there be a King of 
the Boulevard, he is a Bohemian without doubt ; 
and though since Aurelien SchoU's death the 



THE SPIRIT OF THE BOULEVARD 25 

title is held by certain critics of contemporary 
history to be in abeyance, the general voice 
would, I am sure, attribute it without hesitation 
to Monsieur Ernest Lajeunesse, were not the 
brilliant author of Les Nuits et les Ennuis de 
nos Plus Illustres Contemporains so anxious to 
disclaim the honour. 

In certain cafes which have absorbed the old 
clientele of Tortoni's, Monsieur Ernest Lajeunesse 
holds every morning, afternoon, and evening, 
his court of wit, of which court, be it said, he 
is sovereign in the widest sense of the term, 
wielding an absolute power, due perhaps to a 
wise concentration in his own person of other 
court functions than that of king, being at once 
his own court chronicler, court jester, and, in 
moments of justifiable irritation with his sub- 
jects, court executioner. His novel Le Boule- 
vard yields in nothing for fineness of analysis 
and brilliance of imagination to the most 
accomplished works of Stendhal and Anatole 
France. His sonnets, treating of contemporary 
events and persons in a characteristic vein of 
ironical paradox and impatient indulgence, are 
so many encyclicals issued to the faithful from 
the unholy see of the Boulevard. 

Ernest Lajeunesse is a collector of bric-a-brac, 
whose flair is the admiration of the old book- 



26 SENSATIONS OF PARIS 

sellers of the quays, and of the antiquity-dealers 
who colonize the Rue Drouot and the neighbour- 
hood of the Hotel des Ventes, and, like a wise 
monarch, he wears the most portable treasures 
of his museum on his back or carries them in 
his pocket. I have seen him sipping at his 
glass of white absinthe with an authentic Collar 
of the Golden Fleece (a marvel of sixteenth- 
century goldsmith's work) round his neck, the 
waistcoat about him that Lavoisier wore upon 
the scaffold, and three priceless episcopal rings 
upon his index-finger. His room in an hotel in 
the Boulevard des Filles du Calvaire (he has a 
fiat somewhere, but never occupies it) is hung 
with miniatures which represent a fortune, is 
heaped from floor to ceiling with books and prints 
and military uniforms, and the wonder is how 
he gets into bed. He has gathered unique 
collections of walking-sticks and seals, of which 
he makes habitual use, as also of sabres, with 
which he occasionally threatens, and even pricks 
(to the effusion of blood), a wearisome or unruly 
subject. He is an admirable caricaturist, whose 
wittiest caricature is himself. Poet and polem- 
iste, novelist, dramatist, and politician ; a prince 
of good fellows, but capable of the cruellest 
repartee — his tongue is as sharp as a woman's ; 
critic, connoisseur, gourmet, man of the world, 




o 

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M H 
Pi 

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55 
z 

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THE SPIRIT OF THE BOULEVARD 27 

and wit ; hated by a few (as his dueUing record 
proclaims), Uked and esteemed by the many, 
he personifies the Boulevard in flesh and blood, 
and, epitomizing its varied genius, is clothed, 
like a high-priest, in its hieratic raiment and 
adorned with its symbolic attributes. Thus he 
presents a somewhat weird appearance, and 
excites much public curiosity when walking 
abroad. In the throng of admirers that daily 
gathers round his throne are Dukes, Counts, 
Barons, Prefects, stockbrokers, money-lenders, 
composers, poets, painters, sculptors, carica- 
turists, philosophers, dandies, warriors, ex- 
plorers, photographers, Jews, and fair women. 

To describe or even name all those who can 
rightly claim the title of boulevardier, and who 
daily promenade the historic half-mile of pave- 
ment between the Madeleine and the corner of 
the Rue Richelieu, would require a volume. 
They form a corporation without definable 
cohesion, a club without rules or committee, 
for admission to which the possession of per- 
sonality constitutes the sole claim; and being 
in a sense everybody — the tout Boulevard — their 
influence is immense. 

The life of the Boulevard begins about eleven in 
the morning, when Monsieur Ernest Lajeunesse, 
who sets an excellent example to other monarchs 



28 SENSATIONS OF PARIS 

by never varying his habits or quitting his 
kingdom, may be discovered at a certain cafe 
sipping his aperitif and glancing over the 
morning papers. Before the critical eyes of 
the boulevardiers the ever-changing procession 
of the great Capital of Light passes along in 
dazzling and thunderous movement. Familiar 
faces are saluted and greeted, faces that com- 
plete the design and colour of the Boulevard 
like the master touches which give final character 
to a picture. Here comes the familiar slouch 
of Ribot. There goes Deroulede, in the plaid 
trousers and curly-brimmed hat of a patriotism 
which is too old-fashioned to forget Alsace and 
Lorraine. The erect and black-haired sports- 
man, with the immaculate back parting, the 
tired face, the English groom at his side, and 
driving two magnificent bays, is Prince Trou- 
betskoi. There is Hebrard, the editor of the 
Temps. Who is the bent old man who has 
already passed in front of the cafe three times ? 
He is a Russian Baron who for twenty years 
has paraded the Boulevard five hours daily. 
He speaks to no one. No one knows the 
mystery of his life. The Boulevard will miss 
him when one day his wearying promenade 
comes to an end. That was Rejane in the little 
open carriage drawn by two mules. 



THE SPIRIT OF THE BOULEVARD 29 

As the day advances, the newspaper boys 
yell out the evening editions of the Patrie, 
the Intransigeant, the Presse, the Liberie, and 
the Resultats des Courses (the latest winners). 
Beggars linger at the cafe tables. They, too, 
are familiar features of the Boulevard. There 
is the old whitebeard with the mechanical dolls, 
not one of which he has been known ever to sell ; 
so the Boulevard pronounces him to be a 
mouchard, or agent of the secret police. Another, 
silent with outstretched hand, who wears the 
military medal, is (so the waiter says) a shame- 
less miser, with extensive house property. 
Sinister - looking acrobats perform hurried 
tricks, gather together a few coins, and then 
dash round the corner to escape the police. As 
the day wanes, the Boulevard becomes suffused 
with a rich sunset glow, meeting the freshly-lit 
electric lights, while a fine iridescent spray 
scattered over the tops of the Boulevard trees 
results from the collision, just as if a wave of 
moonlight had struck a rainbow. From nine 
to twelve the Boulevard is again in session. 
The air and sky are ablaze with thousands of 
luminous jewels of all hues. The electric ad- 
vertisements, the transparent kiosks, mock the 
moon and stars. It is past midnight. Ernest 
Lajeunesse leaps on to the last Madeleine- 



30 SENSATIONS OF PARIS 

Bastille omnibus. The pavements are deserted, 
but for the policemen patrolling two by two, 
with revolvers at their belts, and for certain 
dark forms darting out of corners or huddling 
upon benches and who are also of the Boulevard 
and claim to have a king. The last cafe is 
closed. The electric lights become fainter and 
die out. Dawn begins to shimmer above the 
heights of Montmartre. With one eye open the 
Boulevard sleeps. 



CHAPTER II 

A PARISIAN MARRIAGE 

Marie Duval was nineteen last birthday. She 
is the typical Parisienne of the middle class. 
Both her parents are Parisians, and all her life 
has been spent at No. 28, Rue Ste. Placide, 
that grimy, age-beaten, but still active street 
on the left bank of the Seine, which has the 
Bon Marche at one end of it, and Montparnasse, 
with its colony of artists, at the other. 

Marie Duval loves Paris with an all-em- 
bracing love. Equally dear to her are its long, 
shabby, uniform streets in what are called the 
commercial districts, it pompous avenues, its 
brilliance and its drabness. Every year she 
accompanies her parents for a fortnight during 
August to a little watering-place on the Manche 
coast, called Le Bourg d'Ault, where at the 
Hotel de Paris you may stop for six francs per 
head and per day, with excellent board, all 
included ; but she is always glad to get back 
again. " Ah, Paris !" she exclaims, as she is 

31 



32 SENSATIONS OF PARIS 

driven home from the Northern railway-station 
— " there is but one Paris !" Then she kisses 
her mother, and pats her father on the cheek. 
She is, in fact, a thorough child of the city ; for 
though her parents are respectable people, and 
have devoted real care to her education, it was 
largely in the street that her quite early youth was 
spent. Here you have a democratic trait which 
is peculiar to the middle-class life of Paris, 
explained too, in some measure, by the love of 
all French people for outdoor life, and by the 
smallness and stuffiness of Parisian dwellings, 
especially in the older parts of the city. Under 
the watchful eye of the concierge, or janitor, 
Marie Duval, from the age of four, was accus- 
tomed to play with the other little children of 
the quartier on the pavement outside the house 
where her parents lived. 

When she grew a bit older she would go with 
the same companions (and in care of the eldest 
of them) to the Luxembourg Gardens, which are 
but a stone's-throw away, and great is her 
affection for its tall silvery fountain, its orange 
and pomegranate trees, its swaying hollyhocks 
and masses of red geraniums, its great scented 
rosery, and majestic palace, to say nothing of 
the little wooden rocking-horses, which cost a 
halfpenny to ride on, and the roped-in ground 



A PARISIAN MARRIAGE 33 

where her uncle, with some of the retired trades- 
people of the neighbourhood, still plays croquet. 
It is now three years since Marie left the 
convent school, and she enjoys all the liberty 
of a young woman, for the old French system 
of keeping girls in a kind of artificial fools' 
paradise until they are married is going out of 
fashion. She is tall, and slim, and blonde, 
with features which are prettily irregular. Her 
small nose has a tendency to turn upwards at 
the tip, her lips are small and well shaped, her 
complexion is a little pale, and her eyes are large 
and blue-grey, neither too round nor too narrow, 
and in their quick glances and dancing light, 
good-humour, gaiety, gentleness, and a keen 
sense of life and fun, seem to be ever at games 
with one another. She is too fond of movement 
to be ever lazy or fretful, and whether polishing 
up the furniture in her parents' sitting-room, or 
mending socks, or scraping carrots in the 
kitchen, she is as bright and gay, and chirrups 
as merrily, as the impudent little Parisian 
sparrows who are clamoring for bread-crumbs 
on the window-sill. Marie knows all about 
needlework, which was taught her by the good 
Sisters of the Sacre Coeur, whom the Govern- 
ment, much to her indignation, has recently 
expelled, and it is hardly an exaggeration to say 

3 



34 SENSATIONS OF PARIS 

that she could cook before she could talk. She 
makes her own clothes, and possesses that magi- 
cal power, almost peculiar to the Parisienne, 
which foreigners notice, of looking well in things 
which are perfectly hideous in themselves, if 
criticized singly. 

Summer and winter Marie rises at six. About 
seven she sallies forth to purchase the household 
bread — a two-pound loaf about a yard and a 
half long, which is called a " flute." At that 
early hour of the morning all the streets of 
Paris, including the Rue Ste. Placide, are lined 
with square zinc boxes, in which the inhabitants 
deposit their kitchen refuse. It is not an 
appetizing sight, though no true Parisian minds 
it. The rag-pickers, with their picturesque 
hods and iron-pointed sticks, sort the boxes 
over for anything that can be put aside and 
sold at the innumerable rubbish fairs which are 
held every Sunday in the Paris suburbs. Stray 
dogs rummage in them for a breakfast, and 
finally the municipal dust-carts carry away 
what is left. 

Marie was not a hundred yards from her 
home when, one morning, her dress caught and 
was badly torn on the jagged edge of one of 
these pouhelles, for so they are called from the 
name of the Prefect of the Seine who first 



A PARISIAN MARRIAGE 35 

ordained their use. At that moment there 
happened to be passing the son of the iron- 
monger, whose shop is at the Bon Marche end 
of the Rue Ste. Placide, young Monsieur Edouard 
Brunet, just returned from completing his two 
years' mihtary service in the loth Regiment of 
Dragoons. Edouard is a ruddy, well-set-up 
youth, with hard, regular features, black hair, 
and staring blue eyes — in fact, not unlike a 
masculine Dutch doll. Marie and he used to 
play together when they were both small 
children, and they celebrated their First Com- 
munion in the same year, she in a vast en- 
veloping white cambric veil, with a bunch of 
orange-blossoms — a bride's costume, in fact — 
and he in a little black jacket-suit with a white 
tie and white waistcoat, and a large white satin 
bow with a long streamer on his right arm. 
Edouard was also carrying a wheaten " flute " 
in his hand ; and being more glib of speech than 
his wooden appearance would lead you to 
anticipate — but then, you see, he too is a 
Parisian born and bred — 

" Mon Dieu, Mademoiselle Marie !" he ex- 
claimed, " I fear you have torn your dress." 

" Thank you. Monsieur Edouard, but it is 
nothing," replied Marie. 

" Let me fix up the tear with this safety- 



36 SENSATIONS OF PARIS 

pin," said Edouard, producing one from his 
pocket, and leaning his " flute " up against the 
guilty refuse-box. 

" But you are amiability itself !" said Marie, 
smiling. 

Edouard having deftly adjusted the safety- 
pin, '' Mademoiselle Marie," he continued, 
" there is a dressmaker at No. lo, who is a 
friend of my mother's, and she will sew up your 
dress in a minute, if you will let me take you 
there." 

" But with pleasure !" laughs Marie. 

So to the dressmaker's they go, and Edouard 
wants to pay ; but the dressmaker turns out to 
be an old schoolfellow of Marie's, and with 
silvery laughter refuses, in spite of Edouard' s 
protestations, to accept the money which he is 
preparing to extract from the innermost recesses 
of a much-worn leather purse. 

Then Marie flies off home, fearing that her 
parents will think that she has been run down 
by an automobile, and to them she breathlessly 
relates her adventure. '' He's a nice boy, 
Edouard!" is the remark she winds up with. 
" I always had a beguin for Edouard !" 

The beguin is the wide cap worn by nuns, but 
in Parisian slang it means a " special fancy " 
for someone. Marie makes this frank admission 



A PARISIAN MARRIAGE 37 

to her parents because she has no false modesty, 
and has long ago made up her mind to get 
married as soon as a favourable chance presents 
itself. Monsieur and Madame Duval exchange 
a meaning glance, and seize the first opportunity 
of Marie's leaving the room to say to one 
another : "I see no objection." And each 
knows perfectly well what the other has in 
mind. 

Also when Marie comes back, trilling a light 
song, and bringing in the smoking coffee-pot 
from a kitchen the size of a pocket-handker- 
chief, which fits on to the back of the dining- 
room like an extra-deep cupboard, she guesses, 
from the look her parents give her, what they 
were thinking about. So, without saying a 
word, she just kisses them both. And they call 
her a "sly one " and laugh, and Marie laughs, 
and asks them what are they plotting, and they 
both swear that they are not plotting anything, 
Madame Duval adding that it is no crime to 
have one's thoughts. 

Monsieur Duval is a maftre-tonnelier — that is 
to say, a master-cooper. Two little wooden 
barrels painted red and black are hung up high 
on either side of his shop as signs of his trade, 
and his window is filled with little oaken 
pitchers bound with polished brass of the 



38 SENSATIONS OF PARIS 

prettiest effect imaginable ; in fact, so artistic 
are they both in shape and colour that many 
of the foreign students who pass along the Rue 
Ste. Placide on their way to the Montparnasse 
buy them as souvenirs. One shape in particular, 
which resembles a clarinet, is very popular. 
But the most lucrative part of Monsieur Duval's 
business consists in bottling wine. He charges 
four shillings for each hogshead which he puts 
in bottle, and makes a further profit by supply- 
ing the corks and the sealing-wax. As he 
bottles at least three hogsheads a day, most of 
his waking life is spent in dark cellars lit only 
by a twisted taper, a rat de cave, or cellar-rat, as 
it is called. He has had six children, apart 
from Marie. Three are dead, and every first 
Sunday in the month Madame Duval goes to 
the Bagneux Cemetery to lay flowers on their 
graves. Two girls are comfortably married. 
Raoul, the only son, has run away. 

" Father," said Raoul one morning, ** I don't 
want to be a master-cooper. I must see sun- 
light sometimes. I can't live always in the 
dark with a ' cellar- rat.' I want to do some- 
thing else." 

The father was silent for a moment. Dimly 
the bitter thought was forming in his mind : 
** To bring my children up and keep them from 



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A PARISIAN MARRIAGE 39 

want I have gone without the Hght of the 
sun for thirty years." Then he said : " Very 
well, my little one ; go, earn thy crust 
elsewhere." 

And the boy went. Within a month after- 
wards Monsieur Duval's hair had turned grey, 
but he never again mentioned his son's name. 
For three weeks Madame Duval wept silently ; 
but, as the tears simply coursed down her face, 
and she made no grimaces to speak of, Monsieur 
Duval pretended to take no notice. Short, 
stout, and taciturn, with an overwhelming sense 
of duty, especially where family, he himself, and 
money matters, are concerned, Monsieur Duval 
is a not uncommon type of Frenchman. The 
iron-bound oak of his trade seems to have 
entered into his soul. He has never owed or 
loaned a cent, and never during the whole course 
of their lifetime did he once thwart the wishes 
of his father and mother. Raoul is a black 
speck on the domestic horizon. His escapade 
may quite possibly compromise his sister's 
chances of marrying well. Driven to despera- 
tion by poverty, Raoul may commit some 
dreadful act which will disgrace the whole 
family. The neighbours foresee this, and look 
a little askance at the Duvals. Madame 
Brunet, Edouard's mother, is a domineering. 



40 SENSATIONS OF PARIS 

calculating woman, and it is likely that she has 
already made plans for her son's marriage. 

In France young people under twenty-one 
years of age cannot marry without the consent 
of both their parents. Should the parents be 
dead, the consent of the grandparents must be 
obtained. Once the limit of twenty-one years 
is reached, should the parents or grandparents 
still remain obdurate, the marriage can take 
place, but only after the parties have served the 
opposing relatives, or guardians, with a polite 
intimation on registered stamped paper that 
they purpose overriding the family veto. It 
sometimes happens that the parents and grand- 
parents are all dead, in which case certificates 
to that effect must be obtained from the Mayors 
of the different communes where these deceased 
persons habitually resided. This is often a 
lengthy and costly affair. In the poorer classes 
it not infrequently happens that the parents 
have to be bribed to secure their consent. 

A case came under the writer's notice of a 
mother who refused to consent to her son's 
marriage until the young woman he was engaged 
to had made her a present of a new stove, costing 
fifty francs. Then a further complication arose. 
The Mayor of the commune where the mother 
lived was courting her daughter, who wanted 



A PARISIAN MARRIAGE 41 

a bicycling costume. The careful Mayor sug- 
gested to the mother that she might still make 
her consent to her son's marriage conditional 
on the young woman he was engaged to fur- 
nishing a further sum of fifty francs for the 
purchase of her future sister-in-law's bloomers. 
But at this point the marriage negotiations were 
broken off. The would-be bride was willing 
to make pecuniary sacrifices to secure her own 
and her lover's happiness, but she drew the line 
at giving another girl a dress. 

No such disaster, however, is to befall the 
matrimonial schemes of Marie Duval and 
Edouard Brunet. To be sure, Madame Brunet, 
who is a buxom woman with a long pink face, 
pointed chin, hard brown eyes, and abundant 
grey hair drawn very tightly above her forehead, 
was at first strongly opposed to the engagement. 
But Edouard is a serious and persevering lad. 
At the age of sixteen he was still going about 
with bare legs and a knickerbocker suit which 
his mother has made for him, without feeling 
in the least bit ridiculous. During his mihtary 
service he never once incurred the smallest 
punishment for breach of discipline. He has 
never revolted openly against his mother's 
wishes, but he is an unconscious diplomatist of 
the first rank ; for, by never contradicting 



42 SENSATIONS OF PARIS 

her, he invariably ends by getting his own 
way. 

When Madame Brunet discovered that 
nothing could disturb her son's respectful 
equanimity or alter his determination, she gave 
in. She set herself to calculate the pros and 
cons of the marriage with Marie. Monsieur 
Duval had no son (Raoul having revolted) to 
whom he could bequeath his business, but his 
chief assistant was willing to buy the goodwill 
for £2,000. This sum would ultimately have 
to be divided among the four Duval children. 
Monsieur Duval had given both of his married 
daughters a dot of £400, so that would be 
Marie's marriage portion, too. Edouard, on the 
other hand, would succeed to his father's iron- 
mongery business, being an only child. It repre- 
sented an income of £800 a year. He would 
inherit £2,000 from his mother. Furthermore, 
his maternal grandfather was a retired Captain 
of the army and decorated with the Cross of 
the Legion of Honour. From the social point 
of view, this was a serious asset. Clearly, 
Edouard was a far better parti than Marie. But 
Madame Brunet was alive to Marie's excellent 
personal qualities. She had ** order," a supreme 
merit in the eyes of a clever household manager 
like Madame Brunet. She was active, well 



A PARISIAN MARRIAGE 43 

educated, and intelligent, and had the makings 
of a good wife. 

The outcome was that Monsieur and Madame 
Brunet paid a ceremonious visit to Monsieur 
and Madame Duval, of which the latter had 
previously been warned by Edouard, though 
they expressed much delighted surprise at so 
unexpected an honour. On being informed by 
the Brunets that they had come to demand 
Mademoiselle Marie's hand for their son 
Edouard, Monsieur and Madame Duval replied 
that, while extremely flattered by the request, 
they must first consult their daughter, whose 
answer would no doubt be forthcoming on the 
following day. Accordingly, the next afternoon 
Monsieur and Madame Brunet receive an equally 
ceremonious visit from Monsieur and Madame 
Duval, who acquaint them with Marie's accept- 
ance of Edouard' s suit, and invite them to 
dinner, together with Edouard and his grand- 
parents, for a few days later. In the meanwhile 
Edouard is authorized to bring Marie flowers. 
The dinner is a solemn affair. Madame Brunet 
and Madame Duval are in funereal black silk, 
Marie wears a white blouse and a pink ribbon, 
and the men are in frock-coats and white ties. 
Captain Boucher, Madame Brunet' s father, 
looks very dignified with his cross and ribbon 



44 SENSATIONS OF PARIS 

of the Legion of Honour. Over their wine he 
and Monsieur Duval lament the excellence of 
the vins ordinaires of half a century ago. Cap- 
tain Boucher is inclined to think that the 
Government is at fault, while Monsieur Duval 
contends that it is the art of bottling which is 
no longer, with rare exceptions, what it used 
to be. 

Edouard presents Marie with a ring, and 
from this moment they are officially betrothed, 
and he may publicly kiss her. 

Sweet champagne is served at the dessert. 
The chief items of the menu are a vol-au-vent 
aux poissons, a piece of beef with olives, and a 
roast chicken, with watercress. The vol-au- 
vent comes from the best pastrycook's in the 
neighbourhood, and bears the name of the firm 
raised in large letters on the crust in proof of 
authenticity, whilst the rest of the dinner, as 
Madame Duval informs Madame Brunet, who 
beams with approval, was entirely cooked by 
Marie. 

Dinners are given by the grandparents on 
both sides, and a dinner, though of a less official 
kind, follows the signing of the marriage con- 
tract at the notary's. 

Then the banns are put up both at the Mayor's 
office and the church, and Marie and Edouard 



A PARISIAN MARRIAGE 45 

are deluged with advertising circulars from all 
kinds of tradespeople ; but their outlay is com- 
paratively small. For what is not actually 
provided by the parents is obtained in mysteri- 
ous roundabout methods at large reductions 
of price, thanks to the long-standing commercial 
connections of both Monsieur Duval and Mon- 
sieur Brunet. The Duvals supply the bride's 
trousseau and the household linen, and the 
Brunets the furniture of the little appartement 
in the Ste. Placide quarter where the young 
people are to live. 

In France no church marriage is valid which 
has not been preceded by a civil function con- 
ducted by the Mayor. When the wedding-day 
arrives, the entire party, numbering sixteen, 
start off in four immense landaus lined with 
cream-coloured silk. The coachmen, in ancient 
curly-brimmed top-hats, have big bunches of 
orange-blossom in their coats, and their whips 
are tied with white silk bows. The entire 
quartier is alive to see the bridal party set out, 
and pocket-handkerchiefs are waved from all 
the windows of the Rue Ste. Placide, where 
Marie is a universal favourite and has been 
known to the inhabitants all her life. Marie 
is in a huge white tulle veil covering a white 
satin dress, with a little diadem of orange- 



46 SENSATIONS OF PARIS 

blossoms in her hair and a big bunch of orange- 
blossoms in her white-gloved hands. The 
bridegroom is in evening dress, with a shiny 
black crush hat, which comes down nearly to 
his ears. Similarly habited are the two garqons 
d'honneur who accompany the two bridesmaids, 
to whom they have presented silver brooches. 
The bridesmaids are in white, without veils. 
The two temoins, or witnesses, required by the 
law are Captain Boucher, in full uniform, and 
Monsieur Chariot, a corporal in Edouard's regi- 
ment, also in uniform. 

After Edouard and Marie, in response to the 
Mayor's question, put to each of them in turn, 
have declared their free and full wish to be 
united, the Mayor reads to them the articles of 
the Legal Code, in which their respective duties 
and rights as married people are defined. Then 
he makes a speech. When the parties are 
personally unknown to him, it is his rule to 
trace in eloquent language the origin of the 
marriage institution from the time " of our 
common ancestors, Adam and Eve " ; but, as 
both the Duval and Brunet families are promi- 
nent commeffants of the quartiev, and old and 
valued acquaintances of the Mayor's, he intro- 
duces local colour by tracing ironmongery to 
the time of the Phoenicians, and declares that 



A PARISIAN MARRIAGE 47 

Monsieur Duval is not only an ideal husband 
and father, but, by reason of his unrivalled 
skill in the bottling line, a real benefactor to 
society at large. Captain Boucher he places, 
in a series of brilliant historical parallels, some- 
where between Achilles and Marshal Ney, and 
this gives him a chance a pay a skilful compli- 
ment to the regular army as represented by the 
corporal. French Mayors' speeches are nothing 
if not pedantic. Then he takes advantage of 
the privilege attaching to his semi-paternal 
functions to kiss the bride and both bridesmaids. 
All the party then sign the register. 

The ceremony at the church is simple and 
impressive. Edouard and Marie kneel on prie- 
dieu, and behind them, also kneeling, are the 
parents and relatives, the witnesses, the gavfons 
d'honneur and the bridesmaids. The cure who 
baptized Edouard and Marie, prepared them 
both for their First Communion, and heard their 
first confessions, makes them a charming little 
address about the Christian duties of the married 
state. There is some music, a couple of simple 
hymns — cantiques — warbled rather than sung to 
the accompaniment of the choir harmonium, 
and finally the nuptial benediction. From the 
church, after more signing of registers, the 
party, now in the highest of spirits, is driven 



48 SENSATIONS OF PARIS 

to Neuilly, where the banquet, or noce, has been 
ordered at one of those vast rambhng restau- 
rants, with saloons to seat a hundred guests, 
which in the Paris suburbs make a speciaUty of 
marriage feasts. As they drive up, a ragged 
urchin thrusts through the bride's carriage 
window a bouquet of lilies of the valley which 
he has plucked in the woods round Paris, and 
cries : " Ten sous, ten sous ! It will bring 
you luck, madame." Marie utters a little half- 
suppressed scream. 

The boy, who has caught sight of the bride's 
face, snatches back the bouquet and dashes away. 

** He's mad," remarks Edouard. " The police 
ought to suppress those young ruffians. Did he 
frighten thee, cherished one ?" 

*' Only startled me a little," says Marie, re- 
covering her colour. The bride's eyes and her 
father's meet in a flash of intelligence. Not a 
muscle of his face has moved. Thank goodness, 
Madame Duval was so busy gathering up her 
daughter's veil that she did not recognize, in 
the starving flower-seller, the prodigal Raoul ! 

Including red and white wine, and coffee, the 
noce banquet costs five francs, or four shillings, 
per head. Hors d'o^uvre, roast beef, chicken, 
salad, cheese, and dessert, are comprised in the 
menu. Four bottles of champagne at four 



A PARISIAN MARRIAGE 49 

shillings each are ordered additionally. It is 
late in the afternoon before the dessert is 
reached, and then everybody is called upon to 
sing a song. Monsieur Chariot, who is the life 
and soul of the party (no Parisian noce is com- 
plete without a soldier in uniform, whose 
traditional privilege it is to make comic love 
to the mothers and flirt seriously with the 
bridesmaids), has just reached the second verse 
of that familiar drinking-song " Un petit verre 
de Clicquot !" when Madame Duval is seen to 
be in tears. It is the song Raoul used to sing 
on his father's birthday when a little lad. A 
hard look from Marie convinces the corporal 
that he has made a gaffe, which is French for 
a " break," and instantly, with that histrionic 
cleverness which is the birthright of every 
Parisian, he begins to stammer and stutter, and 
stares wildly about him in comic confusion, and 
declares that he has forgotten how the song 
goes on. So he starts another one, and, in the 
applause that follows it, Madame Duval, with 
Marie holding her hand under the table, manages, 
after a few spasmodic twitchings of the lips, to 
pull herself together, and her lissom old face, 
which had crumpled up like a silk pocket- 
handkerchief that had been unduly sat upon, 
smooths out again. 

4 



50 SENSATIONS OF PARIS 

A photographer, brought upon the scene by 
the proprietor of the restaurant, takes portraits 
of the bride and bridegroom standing alone 
together, and then in a group with the rest of 
the party. A general move is now made to the 
Bois de Boulogne. There is no prettier or more 
characteristic sight in Paris on a fine day than 
these bridal parties straggling about, though 
always more or less in processional order, on 
the lawns and under the trees of the Bois. 
The background of green, pricked out with 
flowers, gives charming quality to the white 
dresses of bride and bridesmaids, the black-and- 
white evening dress of the bridegroom and his 
male friends, the blue and red of the inevitable 
soldier-guest. Every stranger has been pleased 
and amused by this so common vision in the 
Bois — the bridal merry-making in the open air 
of a Marie Duval and an Edouard Brunet. 

But the fete is not yet at an end. From the 
Bois the bridal party is conveyed in state to 
Auteuil, to another rambling restaurant, where 
aperitifs, or appetizers, are served, and a dance 
takes place, followed by a dinner. It is now 
time for the bride and bridegroom to depart. 
Edouard is in floods of tears at the thought of 
quitting his mother. Marie, too, is weeping 
upon the broad shoulders of Madame Duval. 




MONSIEUR LAJEUNESSE S COLLECTIOX OF MINIATURES 



To fa~e page 50 



A PARISIAN MARRIAGE 51 

Then they are driven away. Corporal Chariot 
has by this time exchanged his red, peaked cap 
for the hat of the principal bridesmaid, and they 
are singing an amorous duet. Monsieur Brunet 
and Monsieur Duval pay off the carriages, which 
have cost £1 each for the day. Then each 
family regains its home either by metro or 
omnibus. The next morning the entire party 
meets again — with the exception of Edouard 
and Marie — for a luncheon in the Bois de 
Vincennes. This is called the lendemain de fete, 
or the morrow of the feast. Its cost is shared 
by Edouard and Marie's parents. It is not quite 
so brilliant as was the noce, but the corporal 
continues his melodious flirtations at a great 
pace, and, in the opinion of the guests, there is 
little doubt that an engagement between Mon- 
sieur Chariot and the principal bridesmaid will 
be announced before long. 



CHAPTER III 
THE PANORAMA AND COLOUR OF PARIS 

From the steps of the Basihca of the Sacre 
Cceur, from the summit of Montmartre, that 
world-famed " nipple," underneath which beats 
the sacred heart of the Paris of Parisians, you 
may study the panorama of the city's colour. 

Paris lies at your feet, not unlike a vast 
cemetery, an almost silent wilderness of stones — 
almost silent, for at this height the noise of the 
streets is nearly deadened, and the movement 
of their traffic is absorbed into their shadows. 

But, if you listen, faint sounds will strike the 
ear, a rising dust of human voices, something 
that resembles the chirruping of a June breeze 
as it rustles over ripening wheat-fields, a dream- 
like music, not sad, because it is made up in a 
large measure of the calling of children one to 
another, but yet pathetic, for it is disembodied 
like a memory that comes from far away. 

The sobbing of a calm sea's wavelets on fine 
sand, the baaing of distant flocks of sheep, the 

52 



THE PANORAMA OF PARIS 



53 



bubbling of champagne, are more or less vaguely 
suggested by this sound. It is not unlike the 
mysterious " summer hum," unearthly yet of 




THE SACRE CCEUR AT MONTMARTRE. 

the earth, which still puzzles naturalists, and 
might be, one fancies, first cousin to the music 
of the spheres. 

Rising from the stones beneath you, this 



54 SENSATIONS OF PARIS 

attenuated symphony of noises gives them 
vibratory animation, much as the Mass music 
played on the organ within an ancient church, 
and heard from without, seems to be the very 
voice of the building, the soul of its walls and 
towers and painted windows, awakened and 
warmed into throbbing expression. 

Thus the comparison with the cemetery is not 
altogether just, though, save for these haunting 
street echoes, the city down below has all the 
silence of the grave. The Invalides, the Pan- 
theon, and the Opera, with their green or gilded 
domes, Notre Dame, St. Sulpice, St. Vincent de 
Paul, and a dozen other churches, with their 
towers and spires, rise up, prouder mausoleums, 
from amidst the small-fry of this ocean of tomb- 
stones ; and, after all, what are these human 
habitations, what is a city, but an agglomeration 
of graves, a cemetery in which each succeeding 
generation buries the unachieved effort and 
dead ideals of its predecessor? or, if you will, 
a national fane — like royal St. Denis, whose 
towers are discernible to the right of where you 
stand — in which long dynasties of high thought 
and brilliant actions and gorgeous dreams, 
tricked out in the cloth of gold of victory, or 
swathed in the black shroud of disaster, lie 
magnificently sepulchred ? 



THE PANORAMA OF PARIS 55 

Paris is a city of stone, and her predominating 
colours are white, with all its gradations of grey 
and drab, added to green and blue, but particu- 
larly blue. Her stone is a living stone with a 
human heart-throb, and, varying in date from 
a thousand years ago to yesterday, wears on 
its rugged surface an infinity of stone- tints. 
Her stretches of blue-tiled roofs, with their 
red chimneys, form a high transparent canopy 
of rose-lilac over this stoniness, which, grey in 
the mass, but burning white when the sun 
flashes on it, distinguishes Paris from New York 
with its red brick and brown stone, and London 
with its yellow brick and stucco. 

One has also the impression, when gazing at 
this panorama of Paris, of a wide grey-white 
undulating shore, which the sea has left high 
and dry, covered with differently-sized heaps 
of blue-grey pebbles that are plentifully inter- 
mixed with small fragments of red clay. Above 
hangs a soft pearl-grey haze, which is almost 
transparent ether as far as one can clearly 
distinguish the forms of the houses, and then 
becomes gossamer and loose white wool. Across 
this limpidity light-brown streamers of smoke 
from the tall factory chimneys are carried by 
the wind. In the farther distance the rose- 
lilac simplifies itself into plain mauve, which 



56 SENSATIONS OF PARIS 

in its turn deepens on the horizon into darkening 
bands of purple ; but almost purple-black as 
are the ultimate stretches of the city's expanse, 
a constant iridescence haunts the jagged line 
where Paris seems to end. It gives to the 
panorama an ethereal but at the same time arti- 
ficial air, as if one were in the presence of a 
marvellous piece of stage scenery, composed of 
materials not wholly opaque, and cunningly 
illuminated from behind and below. 

Under the most typical of Parisian skies, which 
should be of a liquid, not overdeep blue, flecked 
with large white clouds, this theatrical sugges- 
tion, this dramatic effect, is intensified by the 
driving shadows and sudden flushes of white 
which play upon the wrinkled, stony face of the 
old city. 

A few patches of green marking the waste 
lands awaiting the builder, the public parks, 
and the encircling woods, contrast dimly with 
the greys and drabs. 

From the heights of Montmartre it is not 
possible to see the Seine. The inhabitants of 
this essentially Parisian quarter of Paris are 
shut off by an intervening barrier of many 
streets of tall squalid tenements from that 
gleaming vision, and few are likely to climb the 
tower of Notre Dame, whence the broad blue 



THE PANORAMA OF PARIS 57 

sweep of the queenly river best shows itself, 
dividing the city into apparently two equal 
parts from east to west, flowing onwards in the 
sense of the cathedral's own peerless lines. 
Yet the Seine is to Paris as the tail to the 
peacock, the supreme orchestral outburst of 
her colour scheme. The brilliant white of the 
stone embankments, as the blue and silver 
stream swirls through the city, the green of the 
trees that border them, will be repeated all along 
the Seine's swift course to the sea in white chalk 
cliffs and siliceous banks, broad green pastures, 
and hanging woods. 

The Seine is distinguished from all the rivers 
of France by this dazzling body-robe of blue, 
matching the sky, trimmed with silver and 
fringed with green. Instinctively the blue and 
white which are the dominant colours of Paris 
have been adopted into the city's armorial blazon. 

The Marne, on the other hand, which is only 
a Paris river by adoption— for it flows into the 
Seine at Charenton, just outside the eastern 
confines of the city — is always of a deep green, 
clear as crystal, owing to its bed being of a fine 
white clay. 

All the provinces of France have a distinctive 
colouring. The Champagne, with the aqua- 
marine of the Marne River running through it. 



58 SENSATIONS OF PARIS 

and its undulating slopes covered with vineyards, 
is dark green. The blues and browns of Brittany 
are sorrowful and watery. Picardy is cold and 
prim in yellowish-grey. In lush Normandy the 
pastures are as green velvet, while the Norman 
chalk dunes have the rich friable whiteness of 
cream cheese. None of them possesses just 
that joyous combination of clear blue and serene 
white which is peculiar to the Department of 
the Seine, the old Ile-de-France, whose capital 
is Paris. 

People with a sense of colour know at once 
when they have passed from one to another 
of these departments merely from the different 
aspect of sky and earth. It may be objected 
than the boundaries of the French departments 
are artificial, but the designers of them have 
followed certain well-considered geological and 
ethnological lines, and, consciously or uncon- 
sciously, it is by the subtle suggestion of the 
soil itself, with its special atmosphere and 
history, that they have allowed themselves to 
be guided. There has been no serious mutila- 
tion of the respective physiognomies which dis- 
tinguished the old provinces of France before 
the departments were created. Racial charac- 
teristics due to environment have remained the 
same, and, accompanying them, the peculiar 



THE PANORAMA OF PARIS 59 

atmosphere and ground colours are plainly 
distinguishable. 

Inevitably, in the Seine's passage through 
Paris, the blue and silver of its robe are blurred 
by contact with the volumes of smoke which 
occasionally hang upon its surface, and stained 
by the impurities which reach it from the 
streets. Though it quickly recovers its pristine 
blueness after the fortifications have been left 
behind, it is never again quite the unsophisti- 
cated river that it was before its Paris ex- 
perience. Its waters are less limpid, its course 
more nervous, while at its meeting with the 
sea at Honfleur its colour and character have 
changed completely. There the vast stretches 
of mud over which it rolls — mud of Paris, mud 
of Rouen — give to the waters of the wide Seine 
estuary, reaching from Trouville to Le Havre, 
the half-dead moire tones of oxidized silver. 
The great Parisian river dies magnificently, 
and no more gorgeous spectacle can be con- 
ceived than when, on a fine evening, the Seine 
at its juncture with the sea, where its ultimate 
cliffs fade away behind the summer haze into 
a powder of gold, burns, under the sunset light, 
a pale turquoise blue with weird reflections of 
brazen yellow, old gold, and cadaverous green. 
How different from its gentler and simpler 



6o SENSATIONS OF PARIS 

aspect as it huddles round the heart of Paris, 
warm purple and burnished gold where the 
sinking sun strikes it as it softly laps against 
the stone embankment of the Louvre, or 
sparkling blue dappled with milk-white beneath 
the silvery mists of the Paris morning ! 

The exceptionally pure air of Paris enhances 
her statuesque beauty, but her colour gamut is 
less rich and varied as compared with that of 
London. Her colours have less " body," if one 
may be permitted to borrow that expression 
from the wine-cellar, though it would be erron- 
eous to say that they have less quality. They 
are less impersonal. Paris in her general atti- 
tude is far more anecdotic than London. The 
anecdotic, the talkative element is discernible 
in her colour. In London we have infinite 
colour, constantly shifting and changing, never 
revealing anything but itself, admirable and 
lovable as colour merely, enveloped in and 
visible through mist which has the curious 
double effect of promoting the general colour 
harmony, while aiding the colour to maintain 
its impersonality, its moral and aesthetic de- 
tachment from the objects on which it rests. 
There is nothing human in the colour of London ; 
its spirituality is of itself ; that is why it means 
nothing, or is invisible, to the vast majority of 




THE WEDDING-PARTY AT THE CASCADE IN THE BOIS DE BOULOGNE 

To face page 60 



THE PANORAMA OF PARIS 6i 

the inhabitants. " How gloomy !" says the 
*' man in the street," pointing to an unimagin- 
able harmony of purples and browns and 
greens and greys materialized like a spirit in 
an envelope of mist, and playing, unconscious 
of its human surroundings, in a slum. In Paris, 
on the contrary, the colour is Parisian, with a 
Parisian appeal to the Parisian heart and brain, 
and it tells endless and charming little stories 
about Paris. 

From the artist's point of view this may con- 
stitute an inferiority, but who shall deny the 
documentary value or the abiding charm ? 
To separate the life and movement, the human 
inspiration, of the Paris streets from their colour 
is not possible. On a fine morning, what fresh- 
ness, what brilliance, what delicacy of colour — 
blue and pearl grey always predominating — a 
reflection of the Parisian spirit in its gaiety, 
its keen wit, its cheerful love of labour, its social 
and moral thrift, its sense of aesthetic restraint ! 
No too garish poster, hardly an ill-drawn one, 
offends the eye. The very crowds, as Rodin 
once remarked on the evidence of instantaneous 
photographs, hold themselves by some mysteri- 
ous and collective sense of harmony in groups 
that are perfect as to balance of proportion and 
composition of line. 



62 SENSATIONS OF PARIS 

These soft but outspoken greys, and these 
blues, whose hearts verily leap, are brightened 
in the spring by the pure greens of the numerous 
boulevards and avenues, which in autumn are 
a blaze of gold and copper. But when the trees 
are bare and black in winter, the greys still 
shimmer in peaceful contentment beneath the 
encouraging caress of the blue. The Parisian 
season is then at its height. In the tall stone 
houses the fireplaces are burning more wood 
than coal, so there is no black smoke. The 
blue-grey shadows which these houses throw 
across the streets when the sun shines, as it 
generally does, are so luminous and soft as 
hardly to be distinguishable from those of 
summer. Paris looks for the time being a little 
more clothed. Always statuesque, there is now 
more about her of the pretty mannequin than of 
the Venus of Milo. But this is merely a nuance, 
a note. It suffices to give you an idea of what 
is going on in the changed season, which, how- 
ever, as a season, lives the same life, and remains 
of the same colour and aspect, year after year. 
But it is at night that the anecdotic quality of 
the colour of Paris most reveals itself. The 
streets are aflame with myriads of multicoloured 
lights, each of which has its peculiar Parisian 
suggestion to convey. At the same time the 



THE PANORAMA OF PARIS 63 

general colour effect is extremely rich and 
variegated. Paris at night is as bejewelled as 
an Oriental Princess; but here, again, London 
surely has the advantage of her, in variety and 
beauty of colour. After the complete nightfall, 
London lights have none of the harmonious 
arrangement and sapphire-blue setting of those 
of Paris, and their suggestion is incomparably 
more mean and vile ; but Paris is rarely visited 
by those fantastic mist forms, eerie fog giants, 
which people the London parks after sunset, 
and Paris has, comparatively speaking, little 
twilight. Where in Paris could one see such 
an evening as when the November sun sets upon 
the gasometers on the marshy promontory at 
Deptford Creek, and above the purple and green 
mists their glowing outlines hang low in the sky 
like a burning grille ? Remember, too, what 
worlds of distinctive colour lie between two 
such aesthetic poles as are represented by this 
vision seen from the East End docks, and the 
view from Richmond Hill, which may be con- 
sidered as the extreme western point of London. 
When Paris is fog-bound, which happens about 
twice a year, the Parisians look upon the phe- 
nomenon in the light of a huge practical joke. 
They feel just as they did when the electricians 
struck work, and all the lamps went out in the 



64 SENSATIONS OF PARIS 

streets and cafes. Paris is then behaving like 
a naughty child, and must be good-humouredly 
scolded or chaffed into promising not to do it 
again. And her love of brightness and clearness 
is so intense that these moments of sulkiness 
never recur often enough to spoil the Parisian 
temper. 

When it rains in Paris, the effect is no greater 
than that of a child's burst of tears. The aspect 
of Paris is for a brief space hideous as is that of 
the child ; but the fit is soon over and the tears 
are dried, and smiles and gay equanimity return. 
The persistent weeping of the London streets 
has the quality and the high seriousness of the 
gloomiest Scandinavian tragedy. London weeps 
as one imagines Mrs. Siddons to have wept for 
fifty consecutive performances in the role of 
" the Mourning Bride," en grande artiste, making 
a presentment of utter woe which has the abiding 
dignity, the harmonious atmosphere, and the 
colour ragoiit, of a great painting. 

The famous floods in Paris two years ago, and 
the rainy weather that accompanied them, were 
so exceptional as to be without precedent in 
the memory of man. They gave the impres- 
sion of a sudden and violent attack of yellow 
fever upon a patient of surpassing vigour and 
beauty who had never been accustomed to 



THE PANORAMA OF PARIS 65 

illness, and whose quick collapse caused a panic- 
like feeling of alarm to her friends. People 
watched the Seine from its banks with horror 
written on their faces, as if they were at the 
bedside of a sick goddess. Its delicate com- 
plexion changed to muddy yellow ; its breast 
heaving, sightlessly and unconsciously it pur- 
sued the wild phantoms of delirium, with 
madness coursing in its veins. Every hour an 
official gauge was taken, which, like the tempera- 
ture noted down by a doctor, marked the 
advancing stages of the Seine's malady. Then, 
just when the worst was beginning to be feared, 
a slight reduction in this gauge-temperature 
brought to all sympathizers a feeling of relief. 
The crisis was past, convalescence had set in ; 
the Seine was as beautiful and brilliant as ever. 



CHAPTER IV 

ALL PARIS 

" All Paris " is Hydra-headed — impossible of 
definition in a phrase. All London, All New 
York, differ from All Paris, not only by race and 
language, but by the social elements composing 
them. Your concierge, or house-porter, sup- 
posing that you reside in Paris, might belong 
to All Paris, while you, his legal master, might 
not. 

Take Edmond, for instance, the famous 
huissier d'annonce. Firstly, he is Edmond — 
Edmond tout court, superior, that is to say, to 
the convention of a surname, as are princes 
and prelates (he has much of the magnificence 
of both). At half the social functions of Paris, 
it is Edmond who shouts out the visitdrs' names. 

Edmond is tall and robust, white-haired, 
and of a sanguine complexion. Round his 
shoulders he wears an idealized bicycle chain of 
solid silver, which is his chain of office, while 
his black knee-breeches and black silk stockings 

66 



ALL PARIS 67 

and silver - buckled shoes are a costume of 
ceremony which would be libelled were they 
called a livery. For fifty years Edmond's life 
has mainly resolved itself into one long fantastic 
vision of all the most illustrious men and 
beautiful women in the world passing in endless 
procession before him. 

Should you be a foreigner in Paris, and a 
new-comer, and should you be invited to some 
great Parisian reception, stand well within reach 
of Edmond's stentorian voice, and you will learn 
more as to the composition of All Paris than 
any of the society papers or directories of 
fashion could teach you. Edmond's counte- 
nance alone is a book — a Red Book, the 
Londoner might say. His every movement 
has hierarchical meaning. He is contemporary 
history in pantomime, but a pantomime as 
finely nuanced as it is discreet. He knows 
everything, because he knows everybody, and 
with a gesture, a glance, which no photograph 
could register, though perceptible, a change of 
tone pregnant with significance, but inimitable, 
he has said it. 

The recording angel must have at least 
Edmond's omniscience, and most of his im- 
partiality. Politics, religion, art, literature, 
science, music, and the drama, have no secrets 



68 



SENSATIONS OF PARIS 



from him. Revolutions affect him not ; 
Governments succeed one another with dazzHng 
rapidity — he does not care. " His Excellency 




MONSIEUR LE CONCIERGE. 



the Ambassador of Muscovy and Madame la 
Princesse de Strumpfelstiltzkine !" he announces, 
with a roar in which there is a hint of joyous 



ALL PARIS 69 

patriotism, a suppressed National Anthem, as 
the popular representative of the " allied 
nation " enters the blazing room, beaming 
with affability, his niece, that grandest of 
grandes dames, upon his arm. " Monsieur le 
President du Conseil et Madame et Mesde- 
moiselles Potdevin !" Edmond's voice has be- 
come official and stern. Traditionally, and on 
principle, All Paris is against the Government ; 
but the Prime Minister, whether Radical or 
Socialist, stands for France, and Edmond takes 
care that you shall feel it. This does not 
prevent him from proclaiming with a bravura, 
which a restraining reverence just prevents 
from being theatrical, the great historical names 
of the French aristocracy, among whom he has 
many patrons — '* Monsieur le Marquis et 
Madame la Marquise Duguesclin-Carabas, Mon- 
sieur le Baron de Fontenoy - Cantal - Roque- 
fort !" And what a delicate promise of fun 
in his voice when he announces '* Monsieur 
Galipaux !" the comic actor, who is shortly to 
recite a monologue, and how unctuous and 
benedictory he used to be at the approach of 
the Papal Nuncio — that was before the Church 
was disestablished — and with what proud con- 
fidence he flourishes into the room a popular 
General ! Nor does he fail to give due dis- 



70 SENSATIONS OF PARIS 

tinction to the illustrious representatives of art 
and science, the academician, the professor of 
the faculty, the surgeon d la mode, the latest 
inventor. Each in his several way is welcomed 
and warmed by the approving recognition of 
Edmond. But whose is this unfamiliar figure, 
who is this not exactly shy, somewhat awkward, 
plain- visaged, but intellectual - looking person 
without uniform or decoration ? Edmond' s 
face has become a stone wall. He bends his 
bewhiskered head to catch the name. Mr, 
Brown. " Monsieur Boum !" roars Edward, 
without the smallest hesitation. Mr. Brown 
is a man of many parts, and was a personal 
friend of the late King of the Belgians, but he 
does not belong to All Paris — at least, not yet. 

Now, somewhere or other in Paris, Edmond 
is a house-porter 

All Paris, and this, perhaps, is its most dis- 
tinguishing trait, is both exclusive and eclectic. 
It reflects the national as well as the Parisian 
spirit. It is a microcosm of France, and there- 
fore of the civilized world ; for France is in the 
van of civilization, notwithstanding many a 
wayward impulse, many a false step ; and Paris, 
in spite of limitations and defects, is still the 
Ville Lumiere, a Beacon to Humanity, the 
Capital of Progress. All Paris is exclusive 



ALL PARIS 71 

because it is an aristocracy — an aristocracy in 
the true sense of the term, not of birth, but of 
achievement. It is eclectic, because human 
achievement knows no bounds, but is daily 
widening its horizons, lengthening its perspec- 
tives, heightening its skies; but, though ex- 
clusive, All Paris is. not a charmed circle, a 
temple of mysteries to which a shibboleth is 
the only open - sesame, a club with committee 
and rules of admission, a social University 
setting examinations and granting degrees ; it 
is as elastic as the morals of its weakest member, 
and pliable as a cable with unfixed ends girdling 
the earth. One may be above it or below it ; 
one has to fulfil certain conditions to be of it. 

To enumerate these conditions in detail would 
require a volume by itself. Generally speaking, 
it may be said that neither birth nor wealth 
is sufficient alone to procure admission to All 
Paris, nor is any one of the usually recognized 
social disabilities, such as excessive moral or 
physical ugliness, extreme poverty or low 
origin, a necessary cause of exclusion. All 
Paris has its prejudices, but they are not those 
of society. Thus, the Duke who is of All Paris — 
and there are respectable authentic Dukes of 
whom this cannot be said — accepts the fellow- 
ship in All Paris of the dressmaker, the jeweller, 



72 SENSATIONS OF PARIS 

the advocate, the actor, the actress, the artist, 
the pohtician, the financier, the hterary man, 
the shady man, the shady woman, the inter- 
national adventurer, the baker, the candlestick- 
maker, and the thief, whom he would not intro- 
duce into his private circle or his home, with 
whom he may never be on speaking terms, but 
who figure in the same All Paris as himself, 
who are therefore, whether he likes to admit it 
or not, of the same brand and kidney. For 
this and other reasons All Paris cannot be 
compared with either the four hundred of New 
York or the smart set of London. It is superior 
and inferior to both. Its exclusiveness is of 
another kind. All Paris draws its vital juices 
from every stratum of the city's population, 
yet it absorbs only that which is congenial to 
it, rejecting every element of nutrition which 
is not first-class, of a particular quality. No 
one can impose himself on All Paris, whose 
taste is as capricious and as delicate as that of 
a woman of fashion at the close of a season ; 
but certain claims take precedence of others, 
are unequivocal, a priori, do not, in the natural 
order of things, give rise to opposition. Royal 
Princes — on condition that they are not Bourbons 
or Bonapartes, with pretensions to the throne — 
Ambassadors, Cabinet Ministers, Academicians, 



ALL PARIS 73 

have, so to speak, the grand entree to All Paris, 
a stall reserved for them at all first performances, 
a legitimate place in the pageant. They may 
scorn to take advantage of their opportunities, 
in which case Paris will not run after them. 
To this spirit of independence, coupled with 
a loose comprehensiveness which includes 
Bohemianism and cosmopolitanism, All Paris 
owes much of its individual force, its vitality, 
the breadth and continuity of its influence, its 
charm and its colour. All Paris is a flower — 
the supreme efflorescence of French life. As 
with the flowers of our fields and gardens, it is 
preoccupied in an eminent degree with the 
perpetuation of its species, and All Paris, which, 
to continue the floral simile, belongs to the 
order of Compositse, and has a hundred fleurons 
to its crown, would die of inanition if its roots 
were not firmly planted in Seine mud. 

Like the flower, moreover, it has the sense 
of pose. Its appeal is decorative and sensual. 
There is no place in All Paris for those who 
decline the satisfaction of publicity and ad- 
vertisement, who spurn popular applause. For 
this reason certain master-minds that have shed 
glory upon the nation, certain august personages 
who, by their pre-eminent social position and 
family traditions, stand for all that is most 



74 SENSATIONS OF PARIS 

memorable in the history of France, have never 
been of All Paris. They have been above it. 
The First Empire was of the whole world, or 
very nearly ; the Second Empire was essentially 
that of All Paris. Therein lay some of the 
difference between Napoleon the Great and 
Napoleon the Little. 

It is in the essence of All Paris to be spec- 
tacular ; for this reason the theatre is the hub, 
the magnetic centre, of All Paris — its sub- 
conscience, its alter ego, the glass in which it 
dresses itself. At a dinner given recently in 
Paris by James Hazen Hyde, Sardou expressed 
the belief that All Paris could be mustered 
within the walls of a theatre. Hebrard, the 
Temps editor, thought that the audience at 
an important dress rehearsal expressed All 
Paris better, perhaps, than any other Paris 
agglomeration. It included those who form 
part of All Paris by predestined right, the All 
Paris of social position, and those whom All Paris 
had captured or promoted or adopted ; those 
born into All Paris ; those who had had All 
Paris thrust upon them, and others who had 
conquered All Paris by courage, assiduity, and 
address. 

The loadstone of Paris is its Parisianism. It 
is this which attracts thousands of English and 



ALL PARIS 75 

American women yearly to the Rue de la 
Paix, which supplies the inimitable chic and 
cachet to the Parisian gown and the manner 
of wearing it. Parisianism is an intellectual 
grace as well, and not far removed from a moral 
quality. It sparkles in the wit which has given 
the French playwright the sceptre of the 
European stage from Moliere to Meilhac ; it 
shines in the logic and clearness and amenity 
of style which make French writers unrivalled 
in the art of lively narration ; it is in the sauces 
of the French chef ; it is in the gaiety and 
bonhomie and broad philosophy of life which 
every true Parisian professes and practises ; it 
is visible in the characteristic note of French 
art, which is facility combined with strength. 

Parisine, the essence of Parisianism, does 
not bear transplantation. The dressmaker, the 
cook, those two standard-bearers of Parisianism, 
heraldic supporters of its escutcheon, promptly 
lose their tour de main, the cunning of their 
hand, if they settle in a foreign land. They 
are fish out of water. The myriad influences of 
their Parisian environment are missing, and 
they starve for the lack of the mental and 
moral food upon which they have been reared. 
This has been the experience of all their English 
and American patrons. During the five years 



76 SENSATIONS OF PARIS 

that Henri Rochefort spent in exile in London, 
so fearful was he of losing or diminishing the 
Parisianism of his style by any contact with 
the EngHsh language, that the only English 
word he would allow himself to use was the 
monosyllable " home," which he would fling to 
his English coachman when returning there. 

All Paris is a constellation with its fixed suns, 
its revolving planets, its comets, and its shoot- 
ing-stars. Whistler was one of the typical 
shooting-stars of All Paris ; Wilbur Wright was 
another. For the residential foreigner to belong 
to All Paris, it is essential, however, that he 
should be in no way connected, except in an 
official capacity, with his own colony. All Paris 
opens its arms to cosmopolitanism, but colonial- 
ism, even more than provincialism, is anathema. 
For Paris is a jealous mistress, and eyes with 
displeasure any patriotism other than her own. 
But the foreigner may console himself with the 
reflection that in no other capital in the world 
does the meteque so quickly acquire *' right of 
city." The meteque, it must be explained — a 
designation derived from the ancient Greek 
word applied to foreigners in Athens — differs 
from the rastaquouere by reason of his irre- 
proachable respectability. All Paris has room 
for both, but the undesirable and often 



ALL PARIS 77 

dangerous rastaquouere has been gradually 
yielding his place to the mild and methodical 
meteque. In every domain of All Paris the 
foreigner, and particularly the American, is 
to be found ; in the All Paris of Finance, which 
governs in a large measure the All Paris of 
Politics, he is specially influential. Nor is he 
absent from the All Paris of Letters, as witness 
the two American poets, Stuart Merrill and 
Viele-Griffin ; while in the All Paris of Art his 
name is legion. In the All Paris of Delight 
and the All Paris of Desolation the foreigner 
likewise abounds. 

Ail Paris has its virtues and its vices, its 
religions and its scepticisms, its tragedies and 
its comedies, its great and little sides ; but with 
its priests and its profligates, its poets and its 
Philistines, its delegates from every school of 
thought and sphere of action and realm of 
dream, its admission of them is not a submission 
to them. In spite of its numerous divisions, 
the countless facets to its surface, All Paris is 
a composite, corporate whole — a Moral Being. 



CHAPTER V 

THE ODOURS OF PARIS 

Capital cities have a different and distinctive 
odour from that of provincial towns. Obviously, 
the atmosphere of capitals is the more complex, 
but is this a sufficient explanation ? Is it too 
much to say that all provincial towns smell 
alike ? There may be local peculiarities of a 
secondary kind ; Marseilles has African and 
Mediterranean exhalations which are lacking to 
Chartres, but both have the provincial smell, 
that special mustiness which is inseparable from 
what the Germans call Kleinstaedtigkeit. One 
faculty of this provincial odour is to deprive 
the objects it envelops of the highest quality 
otherwise proper to them. A picture, however 
great a masterpiece it may be, never produces 
its best impression in the odour of a provincial 
museum. The noblest architecture loses in 
dignity by reason of the provincial odour which 
may hang about it or penetrate it. Is there 
anything material in the air of provincial towns 

78 



THE ODOURS OF PARIS 79 

by which this odour can be accounted for ? I 
fancy not. It is in the walls and the pavements 
and the shop-windows ; it destroys the bouquet 
of a good cigar ; it is fatal to the aroma of 
coffee and tea ; it lessens any of the attractions 
which may reasonably be attributable to the 
smell of prime meat and fresh vegetables ; it 
is that which makes residence in the provinces 
impossible to most of us, which positively drives 
us back to the cities, even when our health 
really demands rest and fresh air. Defying 
analysis, who shall name it ? In all probability 
it is the Odour of Ennui, for, admitting that 
Sanctity has an odour (as is certainly the case), 
why not Dulness also ? 

Thus, the Odour of Urbanity, which is that 
of every capital city, worthy to be so called, is 
recognizable by the absence from its com- 
position of any traces of the Provincial Odour, 
from which the Suburban Odour is, moreover, 
quite distinct. Speaking in a general way, the 
odours of Paris are urban in even a higher 
degree than those of London, Berlin, or the 
other capitals of Europe. To enumerate them 
all would be difficult, but it is possible to give 
a briefiy-sketched-in account of what may be 
termed the principal " odour-scheme." 

On arriving in Paris, you notice at once an 



8o SENSATIONS OF PARIS 

odour of frying ; not such an odour as assails 
the shrinking nostrils in the East End of 
London, which comes from the cheap fried-fish 
shops that abound there, but of delicate frying 
of good, palatable food in fresh butter. Then 
you remember that Paris is the culinary centre 
of the modern world, a gastronomic sun whose 
beneficent rays help to keep civilization alive. 

This odour of frying, or friture, pervades the 
entire city, but its quality is not everywhere 
the same. In the so-called " populous " dis- 
tricts, on the outskirts of the fortifications of 
Paris, it degenerates into the inferior odeur de 
graillon, a smell of burning grease, which issues 
from the wayside gargotes, or suburban eating- 
booths, in great gusts, borne along on clouds of 
grey smoke, saturated with carbonized hog's 
grease ; for here at every footstep something 
is being fried in the open air which is both 
common and unclean. Alphonse Daudet has 
vividly described in Les Rots en Exit these 
fritureries en plein vent — " open-air frying-shops, 
surrounded by an acrid smell of burnt dripping, 
with great flames rising rose-coloured in the 
daylight, around which are actively engaged 
cooks, dressed in white, behind piles of sugared 
fritters." And his little exiled hero- Prince re- 
joices " in the noise and the odour of the fair." 



THE ODOURS OF PARIS 8i 

But the royal mother faints into the arms of 
her son's tutor. Her emotion was excusable, 
for there are few things more repelling to a 
sensitive, let alone royal, nose than this odeur 
de graillon, this frizzle of democratic batter. 
It smells of the people, and they of it ; it sounds 
a savage but ironical blast of independence 
and vitality, which is at once carnavalesque 
and defiant like poverty. Of the vast dust- 
heaps which loom large in the landscapes of these 
shabby districts, it might be, and very likely 
is, the quintessence. The rickety summer- 
houses, and seesaws, and bowling-alleys, in their 
faded and blistered green or wine red, every- 
thing within range of sight or touch, reek of it, 
or are greasy with its clinging emanations. It 
hangs on the surface of the neighbouring Seine, 
associated, at least by suggestion, with the 
great patches of iridescent fat which dapple the 
river. No other city in the world evolves just 
this particular odour, which might be called 
the Revolutionary Odour, from its suburban 
slums. 

But in the wealthier, central parts of Paris 
how suave is the odour of frying, and, above 
all, how truly French, how Parisian ! It is the 
Epicurean Odour. Other cities may, if they 
please, take precautions to suppress the smell of 

6 



82 SENSATIONS OF PARIS 

cooking altogether, treating it as a public 
nuisance, and by means of flues and ventilators 
prevent it escaping into the house or the street. 
Theirs is simply a less noble heritage of culinary 
art. In France the smell of good cooking is 
bound up with her living and historic glories. 
Artistic ideals,zealously striven after, and never 
abandoned, are revealed in this delicious odour 
of frying. The learned in such matters may 
object that the more penetrating smell of 
onions (Parisian also), rising from the popular 
ragout, or stew, bears with it a more humane 
and consolatory message, especially to those 
who are passing through an acute moral or 
mental crisis, yet no one will contend that it 
makes the same aesthetic appeal or has an equal 
national significance. There is but one other 
Parisian odour which can be said to rival that 
of friture in the same sphere. Less piquant 
and more enveloping, the odour of the pot-au- 
feu rises rapturously at all times from the 
palaces of the rich and the cottages, of the poor, 
from the basements of the most aristocratic 
restaurants and the humblest eating-houses, 
or bouillons, as the latter are called, bouillon 
being the soup made in the pot-au-feu. Readers 
of Gustave Geoff roy's story V Apprentie will 
remember that touching passage describing 



THE ODOURS OF PARIS 83 

the return of the erring daughter Celine to the 
Uttle tenement at Belleville, in the northern 
workmen's quarter of Paris, where the widowed 
mother and the loving young sister are waiting, 
ready to welcome and forgive : " Toutes trois 
s'attablerent autour du pot -au- feu qui em- 
baumait la chambre " (All three women sat 
down to the table from which the pot-au-feu was 
spreading a balmy perfume throughout the 
room). In truth, there is more than carrots 
and leeks and lump of beef or aged hen in the 
pot-au-feii ; there is a large slice of the heart 
of France. What visions does not its fragrance 
call up to every Frenchman's memory — of the 
sparing mother catering for all ; of the clever 
little housekeeper of a wife ; of that strenuous, 
tender, sober, merry life which is the home-life 
of the majority of the French people ! This 
might, without exaggeration, be called the Odour 
of Domestic Felicity. A scene arises in my mind, 
so poignant in its tragic simplicity, that every 
detail is still vivid, though it happened years 
ago. Stretched upon her bed, carefully dressed 
in her best clothes, peaceful, and of unaltered 
beauty, as if sleeping, lies a young woman, 
dead : she has poisoned herself. *' What neat- 
ness ! what order !" exclaims the concierge's 
wife, who has begged me to accompany her 



84 



SENSATIONS OF PARIS 



into the room. The little flat is bright and 
clean as a new pin ; not a speck of dust upon 
the well - polished sideboard ; the furniture 
simple and cosy, without vulgarity or ostenta- 
tion of superior taste ; in the armoire d glace, 




in its big red receptacle, oh, most 
pitiful! stands the pot-au-feu. 

that wardrobe with mirrored doors which is 
the pride of every small Parisian housekeeper, 
a quantity of spotless linen beautifully packed 
away, with a modest sum of money, sufficient 
for the funeral expenses, tucked in between the 



THE ODOURS OF PARIS 85 

piles of sheets and napkins. All alone the dead 
girl lies, without a known friend or relation in 
the world. Even her name is a mystery ; but 
from a torn newspaper lying on the floor we 
gather that someone who must have been very 
dear, for whom she had been waiting on that 
fatal day, had not come, and could never come 
again. He, who had been, as in the Scotch 
ballad, " all the world " to her, had met with 
a fatal accident, had suddenly and tragically 
vanished from her life forever. And in the 
tiny kitchen, two yards long by a yard wide, 
with the burnished copper saucepans hanging 
on the wall in precise order of size, the white 
enamelled spice-boxes on the shelves, and the 
clean plates and glasses shining as only loving 
hands can make them shine, on the polished 
brass-fitted stove, in its big red earthenware 
receptacle, oh, most pitiful ! stands the pot-au- 
feu, no longer fragrant, but, like the poor body, 
cold, the surface of the bouillon covered with a 
thin crust of congealed grease, as if Death had 
touched it, too, with an icy finger ! 

The Odour of Majesty envelops the courtly 
faubourgs of St. Germain and St. Honore, the 
Place des Vosges (which some old-fashioned 
people persist in calHng the Place Royale), 
portions of the Louvre, and, particularly, all 



86 SENSATIONS OF PARIS 

that district which extends from the Palace of 
the Luxembourg to the Vendome Column, 
taking in the 6lysee Palace, which is the French 
" White House," the Tuileries Gardens, and the 
chief Embassies. It is a rich and velvety 
odour (though the velvet sometimes degenerates 
into plush). Green and gold — a faded apple 
green on shot silk or morocco, and the tarnished 
gold of the decorative gilding on the ironwork 
of the old Imperial Palace gates — are among its 
colour parallels, for all odours have their colour 
parallels and their sound parallels, too. In 
spite of the republican institutions which now 
prevail, the Odour of Majesty is still more 
noticeable in Paris than in any other European 
capital. No doubt the explanation is that Paris 
centralized the monarchical authority in Europe 
in the seventeenth, eighteenth, and commence- 
ment of the nineteenth centuries, during the 
reigns of Louis XIV. and Napoleon the Great, 
as no other city has done since the days of 
Imperial Rome. There is a pronounced Odour 
of Aristocracy in some of the great houses in 
England, which may still be discovered even in 
mutilated London ; but it is by no means the 
same as the Odour of Majesty, which is at once 
more penetrating, impersonal, and imposing. 
The wide stone courtyards of the Louvre are 



THE ODOURS OF PARIS 87 

haunted by the Odour of Majesty as by a ghost. 
It enfolds Skeleton Versailles, with its moulder- 
ing parks, like a shroud. At Fontainebleau 
its spectral vibrations send a constant shiver 
through the atmosphere and down your back. 

There is something peculiar in the air of Paris 
which keeps old things sweet. There is an 
Old - World Odour in Paris such as is to be 
found nowhere else, which has much of the 
musky perfume of old gold. (It is commonly 
observed that Gold has the power of retaining 
scents.) It is an odour permeated by souvenirs, 
mostly of Courts. It suggests the slumbering 
aroma of faded rose-leaves in a pot-pourri, and 
is as complex as the scent of a wardrobe which 
has contained the silks and satins, the fans and 
feathers and furbelows, of many generations 
back, or of an old bonbonniere whose sweetmeats, 
though almost fossilized, make much the same 
seductive appeal as do the heaux-restes, the 
lingering charms of some sugared dowager who 
has been a toast in the early fifties. Old book- 
shops, bric-a-brac shops, and even old clothes 
shops, have in Paris an agreeable muskiness 
which distinguishes them from those in London 
and some other European cities, where the 
mouldiness and decay, or merely the dilapida- 
tion and neglect, into which antique merchandise 



88 SENSATIONS OF PARIS 

is generally allowed to fall, are signalized by a 
combination of sickly odours of a most melan- 
choly and depressing effect. It would seem 
that the minute and cherishing care bestowed 
upon their wares by the Paris antiquity-dealers 
accounts for the dignified, museum-like perfume 
which gives quality alike to themselves and 
their goods, for which they are thus emboldened 
to demand much higher prices than they could 
otherwise. One likes to think that the ancient 
objects themselves are conscious of this affection 
displayed toward them, and that their delicate 
and complex odours, harmonizing with their 
surroundings, are an expression of their grati- 
tude and contentment in at least as full a 
measure as is the scent of a rose a love poem. 
To deny these subtle interchanges altogether 
would be to reject the evidence of one's senses. 
Any book-lover familiar with both cities will 
acknowledge that in Paris the books on the 
quays are always warmer to the touch than their 
less honoured brethren, ruthlessly heaped one 
on top of the other in the so-called " rummage- 
boxes " of the second - hand booksellers in 
London. Their personality has been respected. 
\ The dust of dead newspapers, of defunct 
proclamations, of forgotten political programmes 
and shattered political idols, emits a charac- 



THE ODOURS OF PARIS 89 

teristic odour, peculiar to that part of Paris in 
the neighbourhood of the Rue du Croissant, 
which for generations has been the home of 
the popular press. It is suggestive of democ- 
racy. Tobacco, garhc, and beer, enter largely 
into its composition ; but, above all, the atmo- 
sphere of this busy and, at night, blazing 
neighbourhood is redolent of printers' ink and 
of damp paper — of oceans of cheap ink and of 
tons of cheap paper. It is the Odour of Free- 
thought, or, in any case, of Free Expression. 

Naturally enough, the Parliamentary Odour 
is particularly strong in the lobbies of the 
Chamber of Deputies ; it is acrid and unin- 
spiring, without, I regret to say, any kind of 
dignity. There is something in it of the dis- 
quieting stuffiness typical of a French notary's 
office, and of the bumptious insipidity peculiar 
to the inside of Ministerial buildings. A sul- 
phurous fogginess is never wholly absent from 
these melancholy stone - flagged courts and 
corridors, the largest of which is aptly named 
the Salle des Pas - Perdus, the Hall of the 
Wasted Footsteps, forming the antechamber 
to the Salle des Phrases-Perdues, or Hall of 
\yasted Words. For the French Chamber is a 
temple of eloquence, and its lobby, where the 
deputies receive their electors, the sacrificial 



90 SENSATIONS OF PARIS 

chamber attached to the temple, in which die, 
sooner or later, the hopes and ambitions of 
those who put their trust in words. The whole 
place reeks of stale rhetoric, moribund con- 
victions, and corrupted souls. The Senate, on 
the contrary, which is housed in the restored 
portion of the ancient palace of Marie de 
Medicis, now called the Palais du Luxem- 
bourg, may boast of a predominating odour 
which only slightly differs from that of the 
neighbouring Institute ; for it is in the main 
academic, it has the professorial snuffiness 
which we shall find again at the Sorbonne and 
in the lecture-halls of the various University 
faculties. The Senate belongs by its odour, not 
less than by its situation, to the Latin Quarter. 
This is particularly true to-day ; for, though there 
are surviving vestiges in its mural paintings 
and upholstery of former royal and imperial 
splendour, the Senate has the frigid solemnity of 
an assembly of sages, of Conscript Fathers, but 
none of the theatrical magnificence which dis- 
tinguished it when it was a House of Peers. Its 
debates are as tranquil and uneventful as those 
of a scientific congress. The Academic and the 
Ecclesiastical Odours are distinct but similar. 
The Odour of Sanctity, which differs entirely 
from both, has the same vibrations, on the 



THE ODOURS OF PARIS 91 

sound parallel, as of bell-ringing, quiet prayer, 
and psalmody, and, on the colour parallel, 
of old stone and of ancient painted glass. 
Nowhere is the Odour of Sanctity more con- 
centrated than in the ancient Gothic churches 
of Paris. Not even in Rouen is it so pure and 
undefiled, for there the Provincial Odour inter- 
feres. It is the very breath of Notre Dame, 
of St. Germain I'Auxerrois, of St. Germain-des- 
Pres, of St. Gervais, of St. Severin, of St. 
Etienne-du-Mont. But in the churches of the 
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, such as 
St. Sulpice, Notre Dame des Blancs-Manteaux, 
the Madeleine, and St. Augustin, where Jesuitical 
and congregational influences are noticeable, it 
yields to an inferior Ecclesiastical Odour, which, 
if it were not for occasional whiffs of incense, 
would be indistinguishable from the Academic 
Odour of the republican and, in a general way, 
anticlerical University of Paris. The rich, 
warm, mellow, medieval odours which con- 
tribute so much to the unique charm of Oxford 
and Cambridge, and which, though of dim 
monastic origin, are to-day Academic Odours, 
if ever there were any, are absent from the 
buildings of the University of Paris, in spite 
of its being the oldest scholastic foundation in 
Europe. The Sorbonne, with the exception of 



92 SENSATIONS OF PARIS 

its seventeenth-century chapel, has the same 
odour of new stone, of fresh paint, unseasoned 
wood, and yesterday's varnish, as the modern 
portions of the 6cole de Droit and the 6cole 
de Medecine. An Academic Odour is there, 
but it is somewhat harsh, with a note of cold 
formality. The bumptious insipidity, already 
referred to as typifying the odour of Govern- 
ment offices in France, is not altogether foreign 
to it, a circumstance readily explained by the 
fact that, the University of Paris being subject 
to the Minister of Public Instruction, its Pro- 
fessors are State officials. The human element 
— the Alma Mater — is entirely absent, if ex- 
ception be made of a strong redolence of 
femininity, of the scents of smart society trace- 
able to the large number of charming Pari- 
siennes who frequent the lecture-halls of the 
Literary Faculty, investing their approaches 
with the same provocative perfumes as the 
foyer of the Comedie Fran9aise on the afternoon 
of a dress rehearsal. This lack of humanity is 
what repels in the predominating odour of 
those eighteenth - century churches in Paris 
which were, and still are, the centres of dogmatic 
teaching. Built after the Reformation, their 
atmosphere has been one of theological dis- 
putation rather than of the pure ethical 



THE ODOURS OF PARIS 93 

evangelism which spread the warm wings of 
faith over the huddling multitudes in earlier 
ages, when there were fewer heretics to de- 
nounce. In the Ecclesiastical Odours, solemn 
and sedate, which have come down to us from 
the later times, when Mother Church had 
become Master Church, there are vibrations 
which, as they strike upon our olfactory nerves, 
raise up memories of Inquisitional cruelty, of a 
stern semi-military discipline, of ruthless dog- 
matic feuds. 

Balzac, in Le Pere Goriot, has described the 
Odeur de Pension (the Boarding-house Odour), 
" which strikes cold, is damp to the nose, and 
suggests mouldiness and rancidness." It " ex- 
plained and implied the entire person " of 
the proprietress of the Maison Vauquer. It 
still dominates the atmosphere of all those 
retired and essentially middle - class streets 
(Paris, being a fortified city, has no suburbs in 
the English sense), which spread out like the 
spokes of a cart-wheel from the cosmopolitan 
hub. This is the Odour of Middle-class Paris, 
the real Paris of the Parisians, of which the mere 
passer-through knows little, though to the foreign 
resident it soon becomes familiar enough, " for 
it is here that old age peters out and joyous 
youth is forced to work, for there is in every one 



94 SENSATIONS OF PARIS 

of such streets a boarding-house and a school." 
Built of stone, on freehold land, Paris changes 
very slowly. The atmosphere of the middle- 
class Paris of to-day is at least half a century 
old ; it belongs to the period of Louis Philippe, 
and has the same bourgeois qualities and defects 
for which that reign was noted — a low standard 
of artistic ideals, an easy-going contentment 
with the d, -peu-pres, or half -achievement. A 
gradual improvement is, however, taking place ; 
the odours of the middle-class streets are losing 
some of the depressing stuffiness, the renferme, 
to use the French expression, which *' explained 
and implied " the routine-shaped lives of their 
inhabitants three generations ago. At the end 
of the eighteenth century the odours of Paris 
were like those of Pekin to-d-ay. The chief 
lesson of history is that the trend of human life 
is constantly towards higher things. 





< Ci 



CHAPTER VI 
ON THE DECAY OF FRENCH MANNERS 
According to the late Mr. F. Trollope (a brother 
of the novehst, who was famihar with the 
Continental society of half a century ago), the 
last Frenchman to retain, in the perfection of 
its traditions, la grande maniere was Chateau- 
briand, the author, be it borne in mind, of 
Le Genie du Christianisme. That this com- 
plex personage, who had shown himself in 
so many respects an innovator, and even, 
politically speaking, an iconoclast, should have 
displayed an unswerving loyalty to forms 
which to a modern mind might seem to matter 
as httle as, or less than, any others, is attribu- 
table, doubtless, to his romanticism. An in- 
eradicable pride of race was one of the most 
significant elements in the romanticism of this 
great writer, the founder, indeed, of the 
Romantic School, the literary father of Victor 
Hugo ; on it was based his passion for politeness, 
and out of this in turn grew in a great measure 

95 



96 SENSATIONS OF PARIS 

his admiration for Christianity and his attitude 
of veneration towards the CathoHc Church, 
which he upheld and defended, and whose 
tenets he accepted in a spirit of chivalry which 
was the very essence of good breeding. Chateau- 
briand would have condemned the conduct of 
the French Government of to-day towards the 
Catholic Church as, above all things, un- 
gentlemanly, and therein it might have been 
difficult to gainsay him. Good manners are 
impossible without sincere religion in one form 
or another, and the converse is also true. The 
decay of French manners — which is, alas ! a 
real thing^ — has been contemporary with the 
gradual disappearance or decline of most of 
the finer artistic instincts by which the life of 
the French people was formerly inspired. 

\This is a world-wide disaster. Be it under- 
stood, however, that it is not sought here to 
establish invidious comparisons. It is not con- 
tended that, while French manners have de- 
teriorated, English manners have improved ; 
but France has hitherto been the fount of polite- 
ness, from whose sparkling sources the rest of 
the civilized world has drawn its supply. That ^ 
this fount should be running dry is as terrible 
a catastrophe as was the decay of Greek art, 
with the oblivion which overtook its principles 



i 



THE DECAY OF FRENCH MANNERS 97 

and teachings. In a few years it is more than 
likely that Europe will no longer possess any 
but defunct models of savoir-vivre, dilapidated 
antiques without arms or legs. 
\ Politeness, to which the French nation has 
given so subtle and suave a countenance, 
probably originated in a sense of fear. To 
study fear in its highest expression we must go 
to the insect world. No living thing will make 
way for you with greater conviction or empresse- 
ment than the common insect of our fields and 
roads, which through countless seons of fear 
has gradually acquired an elaborate coat of 
armour, a number of eyes in its back, a habit 
of only going out at night, and a thousand legs 
to run away with. Such a creature is wonder- 
fully adapted by Nature for the cheaper 
courtesies of life. It could hardly ever make 
a gaffe. In pre-Raphaelite countries, such as 
Germany and in certain States of America, 
politeness is, though barbaric, of a more cere- 
monious description than among better-bred and 
better-fed people. A more or less vague feeling 
of apprehension governs it ; and even in France 
to-day the cheerful " good-morning " which the 
French peasant as a rule gives you is often 
distinctly reassuring when you meet him at 
some lonely corner of a wood. The practice of 

7 



98 SENSATIONS OF PARIS 

handshaking is traced by certain authorities to 
a desire common to the parties concerned to 
show that neither is carrying a weapon. But 
these origins are of small import. The art of 
politeness, invented and brought to its apogee 
of completeness by the French, belongs to quite 
a different sphere of ideas. Politeness, instead 
of being a homage to the strong, had developed 
from the days of chivalry, when its chief mission 
was to protect the weak, into a perfect com- 
pendium of the art of living based upon un- 
restrained generosity both of thought and action. 
Perfect politeness is perfect liberality. A 
liberal education, the liberal arts, are identical 
with a polite education, the polite arts ! And 
any decay in national politeness cannot fail to 
react to a most alarming degree upon the 
intellect and character of the civilized world at 
large. Brief reflection aided by the most super- 
ficial examination of the main facts in the history 
of man's development will amply suffice to 
show that literary and artistic decadence has 
ever been accompanied by a dulling of the 
instinct of liberality : the cheap church has 
taken the place of the cathedral built at an 
inestimable expense of labour and devotion, 
and similar mental and moral degeneracy has 
marked the invasion of the cheap house, the 



THE DECAY OF FRENCH MANNERS 99 

cheap book, the cheap objet d'art, the cheap 
everything. AH truly artistic effort is a labour 
of love, and love never counts the cost. Art 
has no price, and makes none. A perfect act 
of politeness ever involves in one respect or 
another an act of self-abnegation. There is the 
famous example of Lord Stair and Louis XIV., 
when his lordship, being bidden by the King 
to precede him into one of the royal carriages, 
immediately complied. The politeness was 
equal on both sides. The French Sovereign 
gave proof of unrestrained liberality worthy of 
so magnanimous a monarch by abandoning his 
prerogative of precedence in his own dominions 
to the Scotch Viscount. The English Am- 
bassador returned the compliment by yielding 
immediate obedience to the behest of a King 
who was not his master. Neither sacrifice was 
outdone by the other. In another and even 
more typical instance the Due de Richelieu, 
having called upon the English Ambassador, 
courteously forbade the latter to see him to his 
carriage. " I shall disobey your orders, Mon- 
seigneur," was the Ambassador's reply, " In 
that case," said the Due with a smile, " I shall 
imprison you ; " and, slipping through the door, 
he deftly locked it behind him. But the English 
Ambassador was equal to the occasion. He 



100 SENSATIONS OF PARIS 

leapt from the second-floor window of his apart- 
ment on to the stones below, and, though he 
broke his leg in so doing, he was bowing at the 
door when the Due de Richelieu, delighted to 
have been so elegantly outwitted, entered his 
carosse. It were wrong to laugh. That was 
the grande manure. 

The decay of politeness in France may be 
variously traced to the coarsening and levelling 
effects of obligatory military service ; to the 
growth of democratic ideas ; to the spirit of 
rapacity, which is masked under the word 
egalite ; to the absence of a Court ; to political 
discontent ; to financial embarrassment ; to many 
causes, the analysis of which, however, possesses 
but little interest. That the French are not 
as polite and, concomitantly, not as cheerful as 
they were is obvious to even a week - end 
tripper ; for within the memory of man quite 
the majority of the Parisians, even of the lower 
middle class, were examples of civilized and 
pleasant courtesy to their social peers across 
the Channel. Did not Heinrich Heine say (who, 
however, was not an altogether reliable judge 
in such matters) that ladies of the Paris Central 
Markets talked like Duchesses ? To-day the 
elaborate phraseology of the French colloquial 
tongue is giving place to slang, to idioms 




A MURAL PAINTING BY GAVARNI AT THE ROCHER DE CANCALE 

To face page loo 



THE DECAY OF FRENCH MANNERS loi 

borrowed from English, the idioms which EngHsh 
can best afford to lose, to sporting abbrevia- 
tions. The very grammar is being slowly but 
surely uprooted ; and with the stately old 
language is disappearing the environment which 
was appropriate to it. The cafe ou I'on cause 
has yielded up its life to the noisy beerhouse. 
Art and literature are both deeply affected by 
the decay of manners in France. The vulgar 
automobile, whose inconsiderate movements 
are everywhere the epitome of bad manners, is 
acknowledged to be a chief cause of the poverty 
which has befallen both artists and men of 
letters. The devotees of the new sport have 
neither money to buy pictures nor time to read 
books. 



CHAPTER VII 

PERSONALLY CONDUCTED 

" Want a guide, sir ? Want a guide ?" Then 
various brief, whispered hints as to the multi- 
coloured seductions of Paris, especially by night. 
Mr. Bob Smith, the guide, is a tall shabby man 
with near eyes and red bottle nose, a half-effaced 
Anglo-Saxon call-back in the watery blue stare 
and horsey cut of cheek and chin, but a general 
configuration forced by impecuniosity into a 
Continental and cosmopolitan mould. He will 
confide to you, should you ever give him the 
chance of five minutes' conversation, that, 
though he " has come down a bit in the world," 
he once had the honour of holding Her Majesty's 
commission. In spite of his looks, he is neither 
dangerous nor dishonest, merely incompetent 
and alcoholic. His knowledge of French is 
limited ; indeed, he can do little more than 
conduct his clients from one American bar to 
another, and purchase their entrance tickets to 
the Moulin Rouge and similar haunts of dissipa- 

102 



PERSONALLY CONDUCTED 103 

tion. His price, which starts at twenty francs, 
is reducible to two, with a couple of whiskies 
thrown in to clinch the bargain. Cutting the 
forlorn figure that he does, his clients are limited 
to the circle of Anglo-Saxons newly arrived 
from London or New York who are hopelessly 
" abroad " morally and mentally, speechless in 
every sense, tongue-tied by total ignorance of 
the native lingo, and the absorption of innumer- 
able cocktails to drive away despair. Let them 
beware of his friend and colleague Andrews, to 
whom he will seek to introduce them. Andrews 
is even redder and more blear-eyed than himself, 
with a bigger nasal development. Andrews's 
manner, moreover, is more independent than 
Mr. Bob Smith's ; without being intentionally 
insolent, it is aggressively condescending, for 
Andrews has a wife who supports him, so he 
can afford to put on airs. A black eye — for his 
wife also beats him — will occasionally detract 
from the aristocratic impression ; but Andrews 
has some claim to swagger, his father having 
carried the Diplomatic Valise as a Queen's Mes- 
senger, while his grandfather was a British Ad- 
miral — facts, however, which do not hinder him, 
when times are very bad, or his wife has turned 
him into the street, from hawking British kippers 
in places where his compatriots foregather. For 



104 SENSATIONS OF PARIS 

Madame Andrews is a blanchisseuse, a hard- 
working Frenchwoman with the biceps of a 
bargee, quick with a flat-iron, and quicker still 
of temper and repartee. Wherever Bob Smith 
takes his Anglo-Saxon customers, Andrews, by 
a miraculous coincidence, will be found. It is 
impossible to shake him off. He is constantly 
saying to Mr. Bob and his friends, " Now it's 
my turn," but he never really pays for any- 
thing, and so shares gratuitously in all their 
monotonous enjoyments. It is one of the 
*' humours " of French official organization that 
these two loafers actually pay a tax to the 
Government of five francs (four shillings) a year 
for the privilege of being Paris guides. So they 
are in the strictest sense professionals, and carry 
about with them an inscribed brass medal to 
prove it. 

In the same professional capacity, on as low, 
and perhaps even a lower moral level, is that 
sharp-looking Levantine, with beady brown 
eyes and thick nose drooping over a protruding 
blue chin, who speaks all languages with the 
painful precision, the deliberate inaccuracy, of 
the polyglot. He drives a harder bargain than 
Mr. Bob Smith or Mr. Andrews, and, indeed, never 
for one moment ceases to bargain. You must 
have seen him before, if you have been about 



PERSONALLY CONDUCTED 105 



■^ifc&r 



at all, selling carpets in 
Bombay ; post-cards out- 
side the cafes in Algiers, 
when he wore a fez ; pea- 
nuts and sporting tips at 
Trouville ; Greek slippers 
at Patras ; oranges at Con- 
stantinople. He, too, 
specializes in the night 
attractions of the " gay 
city." The Anglo-Saxon 
would be wise not to trust 
him too far. In that big 
hotel at whose portals he 
lurks there are stacks of 
unclaimed luggage belong- 
ing to visitors who appar- 
ently went out in the 
evening to take the air, 
but who have never re- 
turned, whose disappear- 
ance is a mystery which 
even the Morgue has not 
cleared up. There may 
be one or two of these 
mysteries upon which the "^' -"^^^ 

, IN THE NIGHT ATTRAC 

drooping-nosed Levantine 
might be able to throw 




SPECIALIZES 



TIONS OF THE 
CITY." 



GAY 



io6 SENSATIONS OF PARIS 

some light if he would, but there are chances that 
he will keep his information to himself, and not 
even communicate it to his friends the police, 
with whom he passes, nevertheless, for being 
on confidential terms. Three types of the 
'' rogue " guide, in plain clothes. 

Under the wing of the uniformed guide, 
attached to one of the tourist agencies, you 
may escape from the dreary round of the sham 
" gay Paree," with its meretricious amusements 
invented for the satisfaction of the foreigner, 
and bearing no relation whatever to the native 
life of Paris, and visit with profit sights worth 
seeing ; for at least George has a nodding ac- 
quaintance with the principal museums and 
their most notable treasures. He can explain 
the Obelisk and the Eiffel Tower and the Hotel 
des Invalides. His information is often in- 
accurate, but it has the merit of being brief. 
It is unnecessary that it should be more accurate 
or lengthier than it is, for though he speaks 
plainly (with a German accent) and in a loud 
voice — the use of the megaphone is, happily, 
forbidden — his listeners pay him as a rule but 
scant attention, being, like most English people 
in unusual surroundings, mainly preoccupied 
with the feeling that they are being stared at by 
strangers to whose uncalled-for interest in them 



PERSONALLY CONDUCTED 107 

they must display resentment. It is difficult 
to arouse them from their state of savage self- 
consciousness, though exception must be made 
for the one unfailing and untiring questioner, 
always an Englishman of the bland and blond 
type, who takes an interest in the guide, treats 
him with exaggerated attention, remarks in a 
loud aside to his wife that "he is an extra- 
ordinarily well-informed chap," is half inclined 
to call him " sir," to invite him to dinner, to 
bid him " look them up " when he comes to 
London, and all this in honour of the Entente 
Cordiale (having failed, innocent Britisher, to 
discover that the guide is a Swiss) — all things 
which strike confusion and alarm into the breast 
of the guide, and cause him to muddle his dates. 
The tourist agency guide takes his customers 
round the city in bands, and by daytime in 
huge chars-a-bancs, or, to use the more correct 
French expression, tapissieres ; of recent date 
big motor-cars have been introduced. " Voila 
les Cooks !" exclaims the Parisian, as he watches 
the procession passing rapidly along the boule- 
vards. He envies their well-fitting tweed 
clothes, thinks the cloth caps which they mostly 
wear, which he calls "jockey" caps, a little 
disrespectful to the " city of light," disapproves 
of their briar pipes, and wonders why they look 



io8 



SENSATIONS OF PARIS 




o 
o 
o 

en 
W 
1-1 

/< 
jj 

O 




PERSONALLY CONDUCTED 109 

so solemn and so sad. Sometimes the wild 
scheme enters his head to accompany them, 
and then he is amazed at, and expresses childish 
pleasure with, all he hears and sees, and next 
day writes a witty letter to the Figaro to explain 
that, though an old Parisian born and bred, 
he had never seen Paris, knew nothing of Paris, 
until he became a " Cook " ! 

In three rooms on the burning slope of Mont- 
martre there dwells a grey-haired man, with thin 
features, soft spectacled eyes, a smile which 
always seems to be fading away, but never does, 
a chronic cough, and long, delicate, blue- veined 
hands with red knuckles. Graduate of an 
ancient University, the passion for research and 
an instinctive turn for teaching have kept him 
poor. An American of Irish name and Irish 
extraction, he is at home anywhere, except per- 
haps in Ireland, but nowhere so completely at 
home as in Paris. Paris is the object of his 
unceasing and unyielding admiration and affec- 
tion. Paris is his idol, his church. He loves 
her as a mistress, and obeys her as a slave. He 
is the passionate shepherd of all the intellectual 
and artistic glories which make up her blazing 
train as she steps coquettishly through the days 
and the nights. Her faults fascinate him equally 
with her perfections. You must never say a 



no 



SENSATIONS OF PARIS 



word against Paris to Mr. O'Shaughnessy, or his 
eyes will glitter, his fingers will twitch nervously, 

a spasm of pain 
will shadow his lips, 
and he will never 
speak to you again! 
He will take it as a 
personal insult. He 
loves Paris with the 
whole and unquail- 
ing love which only 
men who are essen- 
tially women's men 
give to women ; the 
only love which 
women — or at least 
French women — 
really want and are 
grateful for. Her 
beauty, whenever 
he contemplates it 
— and he is ever 
contemplating it — 
intoxicates him, 
and he adores every 
atom of her, just as 
she is, to the very rouge upon her cheeks and the 
dye on her hair. She is his one and only love. 




PARIS IS HIS IDOL. 



PERSONALLY CONDUCTED iii 

For the sake of Paris he has remained a bachelor ; 
for the sake of Paris he undertakes translations 
and teaching ; for the sake of Paris he maintains 
himself on a superb level of indifference to the 
commercial advantages of any kind of a career. 
" Oh no, that is too much ; you would dis- 
oblige me if you were to pay more than so 
much," is a favourite phrase with him if he 
thinks that he is being remunerated for his work 
at a higher rate than it merits. He is the most 
disinterested and the least self-indulgent of men 
apart from his hobby — Paris. Now, there is 
no city in the world where the thirst for guidance 
is so intense as in Paris, and no foreigner who 
develops that thirst more acutely than the 
American. He wants to probe to the depths, to 
see and touch all that he has ever heard or read 
of as being worth the seeing and touching, to 
be shown Old Paris, to dine at restaurants which 
have literary or historic interest, to visit the 
little gargote where Thackeray, when an art 
student, ate his beefsteak, the street close by 
where Trilby lived, the hotel, not a stone's-throw 
away, where Paul Jones died, the Louis Quinze 
mansion in the Rue de Braque where the Mar- 
quis de Vergennes drew up the preliminaries to 
the treaty of peace between America and Eng- 
land after the War of Independence. Discreet 



112 SENSATIONS OF PARIS 

questioning at certain American bookshops will 
reveal to this American the personality and the 
address of Mr. O'Shaughnessy, who will for a 
modest remuneration act as his guide. With 
the money thus earned Mr. O'Shaughnessy 
will purchase some rare book or engraving 
connected with Paris, some long-sought-for 
document to be utilized in the preparation of his 
erudite work, " The Irish Americans in the 
French Revolution " — so many offerings which 
he places upon the altar of his divinity, Paris. 

The woman guide. Neither quite young nor 
quite plain. 

A bachelor woman of tireless energy, with a 
long stride in her walk which repeats itself in her 
voice. She lives rent-free in one room in an 
hotel close to the boulevards. Her existence is 
purely one of commission. Whatever she does 
brings her in at least ten per cent. ; at the 
restaurants, where she takes her hurried meals, 
she obtains a reduction of ten per cent. The 
theatre managers love her, and give her free 
tickets, which she sells for half-price at the little 
tobacco shop in the Rue de la Chaussee d'Antin. 
Her clothes cost her nothing. Publishers in- 
undate her with books. Her collection of pic- 
tures and other works of art is worth a small 
fortune. She knows Paris as only a woman can 



PERSONALLY CONDUCTED 113 




HER CLOTHES COST HER NOTHING. 



114 SENSATIONS OF PARIS 

know it, as only a woman wants to know it. 
She is rapidly becoming rich, for the smart 
American women whom she chaperones and 
guides pay her handsomely. She takes them 
to the races, and makes money there, too ; for 
she bets brilliantly. She has no unnecessary 
prejudices, but all the prejudices that are 
necessary she cherishes, and displays to their 
fullest advantage. She knows nothing that she 
cannot use. She is engaged to be married, and 
has been so for years ; but nobody knows to 
whom, for that is her secret, and perhaps by 
now she herself has forgotten. She is too hard- 
working to be elegant, but is careful of her 
person in the interests of the commission busi- 
ness. Miss Grace Green from Chicago can be 
heard of at the offices of the tourist agencies, 
at the women's clubs, at the American churches. 
Every Sunday she dines in the palatial fiat of 
an American dentist whose wife is her dearest 
friend. Soon she will give up being a guide, to 
plunge into some even more profitable and un- 
scrupulous occupation, such as canvassing for 
advertisements or writing plays. Or perhaps — 
for to her energy and spirit of enterprise there 
are no limits — she may become an air-woman, 
and break her neck. 



CHAPTER VIII 

THE MOVEMENT OF PARIS 

In no city in the world is there a greater sense 
of movement than in Paris. The masses which 
London sets in movement are more ponderous ; 
there is more " hustle " in New York ; but the 
impression of movement, intricate to the point 
of entanglement, animated, gesticulatory, and 
almost frenzied, is nowhere more intense than 
in Paris. For this, of course, the French char- 
acter is responsible. The Parisian is never still 
for a moment at any hour of the day. He may 
remain, and every often does, seated for long 
spells in a cafe, apparently doing nothing ; but 
during the whole time his jaws and tongue, his 
eyebrows and his eyes, his arms, hands, and 
fingers, will be working furiously, and so, too, 
will his brain. Everybody around him will be 
equally on the move. The cafe waiters are 
serving bocks on the run. Their endurance is 
amazing, unparalleled. They keep up a con- 
stant sprint from one end of the establishment 

"5 



ii6 SENSATIONS OF PARIS 

to the other, without apparently tiring or losing 
their patience, or, what is quite as wonderful, 
their memory, which remains to the end phe- 
nomenally accurate as to the minutest details 
of the orders which they have received. The 
messenger, or chasseiir, who is at the service of 
the customers, never dreams of walking. His 
favourite method of progression is a kind of 
long-flying hop, varied with leaps and skips, 
except when he is provided with a bicycle ; and 
then he shoots and winds his way at headlong 
speed through the complicated traffic of the 
streets, risking his life at every corner, for no- 
where is the danger of being run over greater 
than it is in Paris. He earns nothing in addi- 
tion to his ordinary fee by taking these shocking 
chances. But it is in his Parisian blood, and he 
cannot help it. The Frenchman has always 
been the pioneer of speed. For many years, 
and until quite recently (perhaps it is so still), 
it was a French railway that held the world's 
record for the fastest train. This was the mail 
express between Paris and Calais. The French- 
man cared nothing for sport until the bicycle 
was invented, and then he showed the world 
how to ride to death on it ; and it was his passion 
for speed which called the automobile into being. 
The furia francesca is as visible to-day in the 



1 



THE MOVEMENT OF PARIS 117 

charge of an " autobus " along the Boulevard 
Montmartre as in its historical application to 
the French soldier's onslaught at the Battle 
of Pavia. The French tempo marks with its 
demon rage the wave of the conductor's baton 
at musical entertainments, the waltzing at 
public balls, the debates in Parhament, and, 
generally speaking, every public and particular 
function common to humanity, from the use of 
the knife and fork to falling in love. 

This feverish vivacity is the first thing that 
strikes the foreigner on arriving in Paris. He 
is conscious at once of an atmosphere of turmoil. 
The porters on the railway platform are around 
him like angry bees, or, in spite of any effort to 
attract their attention, they neglect him for 
the sake of endless disputes with one another 
about matters into which it is hopeless to in- 
quire. Curiosity would even be resented. It 
is, alas ! too often a case of cherchez la femme. 
But once you have induced the porter to cease 
his private and, at the same time, too public 
quarrel and take your bag, and you have noticed 
how the solemn and slow-moving Anglo-Saxons, 
who have been your fellow-travellers, have 
suddenly been infected by the Parisian spirit of 
bustle, how promptly they have adopted the 
same tempo, pushing, clamouring, and pro- 



ii8 SENSATIONS OF PARIS 

testing, seeking even to invent on the spur of the 
moment a language of gesticulation in response 
to a language wholly or mainly unknown to 
them, but to all appearances chiefly gesticula- 
tory, you will find yourself and your baggage 
in the hands of the Paris cabman, who is one of 
the princes or leading spirits of the city's move- 
ment. This is true still, although the advent 
of the motor-car has threatened the Paris cab- 
man's throne without having overturned it, as 
is the case with the London cabman. The Paris 
cabman is still a potentate, a feudal despot, 
monarch of all he surveys, wielding his untiring 
whip as if it were a royal sceptre — the most 
arrogant, proud, cruel, godless, feckless, san- 
guinary tyrant that Christendom and modern 
civilization have suffered to survive. Of all 
men in the world, it is he who gives and claims 
the minimum of sympathy. If it were so to 
happen that to-morrow all the Paris cabmen 
were to find themselves on the brink of starva- 
tion, not one little finger would be raised 
throughout the entire metropolis to save or 
succour them. In London, on the contrary, 
the cabman, who has always been a respected 
institution, has found himself raised to the 
dignity of a national martyr, since the introduc- 
tion of the motor-car seemed destined to deprive 



THE MOVEMENT OF PARIS 119 

him of his Hvelihood. Paris would never have 
subscribed eight thousand pounds, as London 
did, or even ten cents, to rescue her cabmen 
from any fate, however horrible. She hates 
them too much, and she knows how richly and, 
in a measure, deservedly that hatred is returned. 
That this should be so is due in a large measure 
to the fact that the French are the most belli- 
cose race on earth. The peculiarity was noticed 
some centuries ago by no less a personage than 
Julius Cgesar, and the Gauls have since amply 
maintained their reputation for internecine 
quarrelling. Among Anglo-Saxons there is a 
general and instinctive desire to do business on 
the basis of an entente cordiale. In Paris the 
hailing of a cabman is looked on by both parties 
to the transaction as an implied declaration of 
war. The cabman takes your measure, and 
you take his number (if you are wise) . At once 
he will give you reason to remark that he has 
a rooted and premeditated objection to drive 
you where j^ou wish to go. Perhaps he prefers 
the Opera quarter because it is central, or, 
should the weather be fine, his heart is probably 
set upon driving in the Bois, while you may 
have business at the Bourse. He explains his 
views on the subject selfishly and rudely. A 
foreigner alighted recently from the Calais train 



120 SENSATIONS OF PARIS 

at the Northern Railway station in Paris, and 
ordered a typical Parisian cabman, bloated, 
pale, and absinth-soaked, to drive him to the 
Rue Blomet, which is a street in the relatively 
distant Vaugirard quarter. ** Pent on habiter 
la Rue Blomet ?" (Is it possible to inhabit the 
Rue Blomet ?) exclaimed the ragged ruffian on 
an epigrammatic note of disdain which would 
have done honour to Beau Brummell. But it 
is when the Paris cabman has once started on 
his " course " — a warpath in the strict sense of 
the term — that he proves to what a limitless 
extent he is the enemy of mankind. His hatred 
of the bourgeois — the " man in the street " — in 
spite of, and indeed because of, his being a 
potential client, is expressed at every yard. 
He constantly tries to run him down, which 
makes strangers to Paris accuse the Paris cab- 
man of driving badly, while in point of fact he 
is not driving at all, but playing with miraculous 
skill a game of his own, which suggests cannon 
billiards in the hands of a world's champion. 
But it is not with the public alone that he is at 
war. On all other cabmen whose path he crosses, 
on omnibus drivers, motor-car men, bicyclists, 
private coachmen, costermongers with barrows, 
and (50^/0 voce) the police, he heaps deadly 
insults, the least outrageous of which are 



THE MOVEMENT OF PARIS 121 

"Ours!" (Bear!) and " Fourneau !" (Oven!), 
the latter containing a subtle double meaning, 
intelligible only to those who have Paris argot, 
or slang, at their finger-ends, and too long to 
explain. The cabman's wild career through the 
streets, the constant waving and slashing of his 
pitiless whip, his madcap hurtlements and col- 
lisions, the frenzied gesticulations which he 
exchanges with his " fare," the panic-stricken 
flight of the agonized women whose lives he 
has endangered, the ug]y rushes which the 
public occasionally make at him with a view to 
lynching him, the sprawlings and fallings of his 
maddened, hysterical, starving horse, con- 
tribute as much as anything to the spasmodic 
intensity, the electric blue-fire diablerie, which 
are characteristic of the general movement of 
Paris. 

All that can be said in mitigation of the Paris 
cabman's methods is that " he has them in the 
blood." Every Parisian (and the cabman is no 
exception) has the soul of a dictator and the 
spirit of an artist. To exercise autocratic 
power, and failing this to enjoy the maximum 
of personal freedom from all restraint, moral or 
social, is the goal at which he is ever aiming, 
openly or secretly. Watch a Paris cabman, 
for instance, on a wet day, or on some festival 



122 SENSATIONS OF PARIS 

occasion, such as the New Year, when there is 
a big demand for his services. With what 
haughty disdain does he drive along the streets, 
deaf to every appeal, refusing every fare, re- 
joicing in the discomfort and inconvenience he 
is causing, triumphant in the thought that at 
last he has the bourgeois at his feet, that the 
clientele which he detests and which detests 
him is now a humiliated, bemuddled, or be- 
draggled mob of supplicants waiting on his will, 
whom he can enrage to boiling-point with his 
sneers and his silence, or lash with his sarcasms 
as cruelly as he beats his horse. Cheerfully 
does he sacrifice half a day's earnings to the 
enjoyment of this exquisite revenge, for at 
least he can say to his hungry wife and children, 
when he gets home, " J'ai vecu." They may 
not have dined, but he has lived. It is because 
the Parisian recognizes in himself a certain com- 
munity of sentiment with the cabman in this 
attitude toward life that he tolerates him, 
though he does not forgive him. The Imperial, 
the Napoleonic pose (and no one can assume it 
with more superb arrogance than the cabman 
when he pleases) is ever dear to him, and the 
historic phrase, " Qu'importent de vagues hu- 
manit^s pourvu que le geste soit beau \" (What 
does the fate of vague human beings matter, so 




W 

z 

o 
^ o 

w E 

H 

O 

H 
Z 

w 

> 
o 




Pi W 



THE MOVEMENT OF PARIS 123 

long as one's gesture is beautiful !), is among 
his treasured maxims. 

The motor-car driver, if less of an artist than 
the cabman, is a man of science, with the added 
dignity and trustworthiness derived from a 
superior education, and from a sense of belong- 
ing to the inscrutable future ; while the cab- 
man confessedly belongs to the past, and has, 
indeed, always placed his political influence, 
which is considerable, at the service of reac- 
tionary movements. The last great conspiracy 
in France, that of General Boulanger, by which 
the Republican regime came within an inch of 
being overthrown, had no more enthusiastic 
backers than the Paris cabmen. The Paris 
chauffeur is the best in Europe, and perhaps in 
the world ; and though he seldom respects the 
limit of speed imposed by the police regulations, 
it is not often that a serious accident can be 
attributed to his negligence or incapacity. 
This excellent reputation he shares with the 
omnibus drivers and the chauffeurs, or *' watt- 
men," as they are called (for an unknown reason), 
of the electric tramways — all sober and experi- 
enced men. The omnibus and the tramway 
systems, protected by strict monopolies, organ- 
ized with meticulous method, conducted by 
uniformed officials who bully the public, are 



124 SENSATIONS OF PARIS 

an exact reflection of Parisian middle-class life. 
The innate conservatism of this monopoly - 
loving country has prevented both omnibus 
and tramway from moving with the times, and 
Paris, of all the great capitals of the world, is 
unique in this respect — that she still possesses 
a one-horse tramway, the strange old-fashioned 
thing, a relic of the Second Empire, which runs 
between St. Sulpice and Auteuil, drawn by a 
phantom-like white horse, which, in spite of 
its phenomenal age and extraordinary thinness, 
gallops along with uncanny speed. The move- 
ment on the Paris boulevards derives much of 
its picturesqueness from the ponderous omnibus 
plunging and thundering along with its varie- 
gated load of human beings, a perambulating 
parterre of flowers in leafy June, a black and 
hearse-like object, with its compact hooding of 
streaming umbrellas, in cheerless winter. The 
motor-cars flashing in swiftest procession along 
a central passage specially reserved for them ; 
the skimming bicycles; the handsomely-equipped 
carriages ; the occasional four-in-hand, or " mail- 
coach," with its echoing horn; the open cabs 
whose drivers are partially reconciled to hu- 
manity by the beauty and gaiety around them ; 
the smart riders on their gleaming horses ; the 
shimmer and glitter of the lovely gowns and 



THE MOVEMENT OF PARIS 125 

the dazzling faces of their wearers ; the slow- 
moving crowds of well-dressed and leisured folk 
beneath the blazing green trees, with little chil- 
dren, bright as butterflies, darting in and out 
among them ; the martial bravery of a squadron 
of cuirassiers escorting the President in a 
carriage, with red-cockaded coachmen and foot- 
men ; the lumbering water-carts, spreading out 
from behind them their silver fans of liquid 
freshness, make up the typical movement on a 
spring afternoon in the Champs Elysees ; and 
an exquisite combination it is of colour, light, 
and sound, all in harmonious movement to- 
gether, a veritable polonaise worthy of Chopin, 
with the Arc de Triomphe, a symbolic portal, 
towering in the distance. 

This is the movement of wealthy, easy-going 
Paris, from which the coarser elements of com- 
mercial and industrial traffic are by special 
regulation excluded. But all roads in France 
lead to Paris, and through the various gates of 
the city there passes all day long a steady stream 
of carts and drays and tumbrils loaded with the 
produce of the most fertile country in Europe, 
and these cumbersome vehicles have a tendency 
to concentrate at busy points, notably in the 
neighbourhood of the Central Markets. Wine, 
after its passage through the great depot at 



126 SENSATIONS OF PARIS 

Bercy, arrives in mighty casks attached to two 
immensely long tree-trunks, parallel with one 
another, and balanced between two high wheels ; 
and this primitive and barbarous carriage drags 
its slow length along the teeming thoroughfare 
like a huge alligator. A string of twenty horses 
or more of the splendid Percheron breed from 
Normandy draws painfully up the steep incHnes, 
leading from the quays a monumental load of 
white stone blocks which have been quarried 
in Normandy from the flanks of those selfsame 
cliffs and dunes which a thousand years ago 
supplied the stones for Notre Dame. Tall 
Normans with white blouses and enormous white 
felt hats urge on the teams in a patois which is 
still the legal language of England, cracking 
whips which are many yards in length, while 
the bells on the harness jingle sweetly, and the 
parti-coloured ribbons and plumes, with which 
the horses' heads are bedizened, flutter and nod. 
This black tumbril filled with coal, which is 
coming up behind, is exactly similar to the 
ignoble cart in which Marie Antoinette was con- 
veyed to the guillotine. An awkward, almost 
square thing, on two high wheels, with sides 
slanting outward from the bottom, it has a 
sinister appearance, due no doubt in part to 
the gruesome associations of a shape which has 



THE MOVEMENT OF PARIS 127 

not changed since the sanguinary days of the 
Revolution. It is a ramshackle contrivance, 
and the sight of a tumbril with one of its wheels 
broken to pieces, and most of its burden of coal 
lying in the middle of the road, is of such con- 
stant occurrence at the foot of the hill in the 
Rue Lafayette that it may be accounted among 
the daily amusements of the Parisian lounger. 
On the other hand, a really admirable spectacle 
is the arrival after midnight of the great country 
carts from the market-gardens around Paris, 
piled to a giddy height with tier upon tier of 
vegetables. In the deep blue atmosphere of 
the night, against the gleam of the rare gas- 
lamps, the red of the carrots, the dead white of 
the turnips, and the sea-greens of the cabbages, 
acquire such a splendour and richness of quality 
as make the heart leap if one has any love of 
colour. 

" Processional colour," if one may use such a 
term, is specially dear to the Parisian, and he 
manipulates it with rare skill, boldly but har- 
moniously, without vulgar or garish effects. 
The solemn funerals, with their flower-heaped 
hearses, at the passage of which every man and 
boy raises his hat, while the womankind cross 
themselves ; the marriage corteges, with masses 
of white — whiteness of bridal gowns, bouquets, 



128 SENSATIONS OF PARIS 

displayed shirt-fronts and cream-lined coaches, 
supply daily notes of colour to the ever-moving 
vision of Paris. The stately movement of the 
funeral stops all other traffic, hushes it into 
reverent silence — such is the Parisian respect 
for the dead ; and if it be some naval or military 
officer or dignitary of the Legion of Honour who 
is being buried, the black line of the mourners 
passes along the streets relieved by the red and 
blue uniforms of the military escort, or perhaps 
by the green of an academician's livery ; the 
yellow, red, or purple, or a professor's robe, with 
its dappled ermine ; the white ostrich plumes 
of an ambassadorial cocked hat. 

Bitterness of feeling between political parties 
is such that religious processions and parades, 
with display of insignia and banners and accom- 
paniment of bands, by patriotic leagues, free- 
masons, trade corporations, and guilds of all 
kinds, have gradually been discouraged to the 
point of practical suppression. But Paris 
does not forget that, while rivalling other 
capitals in respect of commercial and cosmo- 
politan development, she possesses a unique 
interest as the home of the most powerful Uni- 
versity in the world, the centre of attraction to 
the youth of France, the educational nursery of 
her statesmen and of the vast array of function- 



THE MOVEMENT OF PARIS 129 

aries by whom the affairs of the country are 
administered. She is therefore indulgent to the 
high spirits of her student population, whose 
monomes (long processions in Indian file), gener- 
ally undertaken for the purpose of protesting 
against some unpopular action by the Minister 
of Public Instruction, who is ex-officio Grand 
Master of the University, occasionally " de- 
scend " from the Latin Quarter on the left bank 
of the Seine, and invade the more decorous 
boulevards of the right bank. Wearing large 
velvet berets, or tam-o'-shanter caps, trimmed 
and beribboned with the colours of their respec- 
tive faculties — the last vestiges in France of the 
student costume of the Middle Ages, and sur- 
viving in the stiffened mortar-board variety 
peculiar to England and America — the students 
speed along at an amazingly rapid pace, cutting 
through the traffic like a knife, chanting their 
protestations as they go, to some popular tune. 
Sudden and spontaneous, and with a brightness 
of colour and a youthful gaiety all its own, the 
students' monome is one of the many expressions 
of wit and humour which characterize the move- 
ment of Paris. At carnival time, and on the 
great national fete-day of July 14, the city is 
one moving sea of exuberant fun and saturnalian 
jollity. The main thoroughfares are given up 

9 



130 SENSATIONS OF PARIS 

to the exclusive possession of the hoUday- 
makers. The multicoloured paper confetti 
and the serpentins, which, by the way, are 
Parisian inventions now adopted for festival 
occasions all the world over, give to the streets 
the same vibratory colour and effect of disinte- 
grated sunshine which the impressionist painters 
seek to render in their pictures — an atmosphere 
in brilliant movement, palpitating with the joy 
of living. But, of all movement in the Paris 
streets, none stirs the emotions more than that 
of the national flag when it flutters in the breeze. 
Its red, white, and blue, in plain juxtaposition 
without device or added design, have a charm 
of dignity and simplicity which explains much 
of the passionate devotion which all Frenchmen 
feel for it, and is a preponderating reason why, 
in spite of many changes of regime, no other 
flag has taken its place. All flags hide in their 
folds the power of arousing subtle and delicate 
sensations. Prone upon the coffin of a hero, or 
brooding in the stillness of a panoply, they strike 
a note of majestic pathos peculiar to themselves, 
while in the endless variety of movements which 
they snatch from the wind as they fly at a mast- 
head they seem to be signalling, to all who have 
eyes to see, ineffable things, the tale of " battles 
long ago," the epic of dead glories and great 



THE MOVEMENT OF PARIS 131 

examples. Above much that is sordid and 
sorrowful in the record of the French Republic, 
the tricolour still maintains its spotless sym- 
bolic character. Its red, white and blue stand 
for the three great humane ideals of the re- 
publican motto — liberty, equality, and frater- 
nity, the gospel of the Revolution, and the 
burden of the message which the victorious 
eagles of Napoleon spread over the Old World. 
On July 14, the anniversary of the capture 
and the destruction of the Bastille, the streets 
of Paris, particularly in the populous quarters, 
are vistas of red, white, and blue, myriads of 
tricolour flags being suspended from windows 
and balconies, and stretched across the road- 
ways in a kind of patriotic and republican em- 
brace from house to house. All Paris is in a 
flutter with these waving emblems of joy and 
peace and good-will, and the delirious crowds 
dancing beneath them in a spirit of perfect de- 
mocracy which admits of no social distinctions, 
but is none the less governed and restrained by 
an innate polish of manners, realize under the 
magic of their spell, for the few hours that the 
fete lasts, the three ideal conditions of the 
national device. 



CHAPTER IX 

THE NEWS OF THE DAY IN PARIS 

There is no individual type of Frenchmen to 
which some French paper does not respond. It 
may be doubted whether in any other country 
the analogy is so complete. A German pro- 
fessor of psychology has commented on the 
subtle affinity between the slices of roast beef 
in the London restaurants and the size of the 
Times. But neither in America nor England 
is the national life reflected by the political 
press so completely as in France. 

Take the sober and serious Frenchman, re- 
served in speech, inexpansive except when em- 
bracing relatives on railway platforms, cultured, 
keen in business, a little " near," moderate in 
politics as in all things. He is a republican, for 
it would be repugnant to him to be " agin the 
Government"; but he has no more faith in 
Socialism than in the possible restoration of a 
monarchy. He is sceptical, but respects re- 
ligion. He is patriotic, yet a lover of peace. 

132 



THE NEWS OF THE DAY IN PARIS 133 

Towards foreign countries he is polite without 
enthusiasm ; his sincere admiration for America 
is tempered by a Httle bewilderment ; he has 
loyally accepted the entente cordiale, while hold- 
ing that England has much the best of the bar- 
gain. He is sometimes gay, but with a rigid 
decorum ; frequents the Comedie Frangaise ; 
and, while never exceeding a proper limit, has a 
rational taste for good wine, good cheer, and a 
pretty face. This first-class citizen reads the 
Temps. His family name is Prudhomme, but he 
is an improvement on that famous ancestor of his 
who gave lustre to the reign of Louis Philippe. 
His antithesis is talkative, passionate Mon- 
sieur Chauvin, who, with his wild gestures and 
wilder statements, his incredible credulity, his 
fantastic hatreds, and equally inexplicable en- 
gouments, is all that is left to us (ladies and 
gentlemen !) of Don Quixote — a Don Quixote 
of the boulevard, with flat-brimmed Montmartre 
hat in place of the barber's basin, and an um- 
brella as obese and as faithful as Sancho Panza. 
Chauvin's materializations are many. If a 
Bonapartist, and haunted by the Napoleonic 
legend, he subscribes to the Autorite — that 
Bobadil of one-cent dailies ; to the Libre Parole, 
if his creed be the extermination of the alien and 
the Jew ; to the Verite Francaise, if he confound 



134 SENSATIONS OF PARIS 

patriotism with orthodoxy, and look upon the 
Protestant nations as the inveterate enemies of 
France. Monsieur Chauvin shakes hands with 
Henri Rochef ort (when the great pamphletist has 
not managed to avoid him, as he generally tries 
to), and acknowledges the inextinguishable verve 
of the Patrie's leading article. For the Patrie is 
Henri Rochef ort — and naught else. And Henri 
Rochefort is the reincarnation of that same 
aristocratic and revolutionary spirit which ani- 
mated Mirabeau. Like Mirabeau, he has over- 
thrown a monarchy by the power of the word, 
written if not spoken. He has the same 
passionate love of freedom and mistrust of the 
mob. He remains a Marquis to the finger-tips, 
in spite of himself. And, as he has humorously 
remarked, when his enemies wish to wound him 
most, they remind him of his title. Every cab- 
man and cafe waiter in Paris reads the Patrie. 
Henri Rochefort is nearly eighty, but he is still 
the youngest and wittiest leader-writer in the 
world. 

But Mirabeau redivivus and Monsieur Chauvin 
are but voices in the wilderness of the republican 
press. In the Humanite of M. Jaures we have, 
typified, the popular tribune of to-day, upon 
whom has fallen the mantle of Gambetta, with 
an eloquence as unquenchable as was that of 





^ « 






THE NEWS OF THE DAY IN PARIS 135 

the inspired Jew of Genoa, but with a pro- 
gramme which is not yet " ministrable," be- 
cause it is still professedly Collect! vist. Here 
we have oratory " with the paunch " which 
Lavengro found to be indispensable, and that 
wealth of rolling " r's " without which the 
French demagogue would be lost. Cest I'Hti- 
manite to^ite entier-r-re, monsieur ! M. Jaures is 
merely Gambetta's rhetorical Ehjah, but among 
the numberless " favourite disciples " of the 
" Master " are Joseph Reinach, the editor of 
Gambetta's speeches, whose influence is pre- 
dominant in the Repuhlique Franpaise, the organ 
of discreet Moderantism ; and Yves Guyot, who 
in the Siecle has for years advocated free trade 
and friendship with England ; while over a host 
of other organs, both in Paris and the provinces, 
the cult of Gambetta throws a mysterious 
politico-religious light similar to that of Buddha 
over the East. The Gambettists, who include 
Deroulede and Delcasse, the opposite poles of 
political thought, dispute among themselves as 
to which interprets the " Master's " ideas, for- 
getting that he was the inventor of Opportunism, 
which means changing one's coat. 

Your out-and-out radical, atheist, freemason, 
and devourer of cures, reads the Lanterne. To him 
the sight of a priest is like a red rag to a bull. 



136 SENSATIONS OF PARIS 

So he thinks and talks of little else but religion. 
Frankly anticlerical, but less rabid, are the 
Radical and the Rappel. These three are one- 
cent papers. Parisians of the lower middle 
class are, as a rule, Voltairean. But your con- 
cierge, having to satisfy many consciences before 
he can expect his annual tip, takes in the Petit 
Journal or the Petit Parisien, which, having no 
clearly defined religious opinions, can be dis- 
played in his loge without danger. And these 
papers make a speciality of city news — the fait 
divers — which keenly appeals to " Monsieur 
Pipelet's " notorious love of gossip. 

In addition to the Verite Franfaise, the 
Churchman has the Croix, the Univers, the 
Monde, the Patrie, the Presse. Monarchy's 
fading charms are celebrated in the Gaiilois and 
the Soleil, but the only official organ of the Due 
d' Orleans is the Correspondance Nationale, et 
Nouvelles, a lithographed sheet distributed to 
about five hundred papers throughout France. A 
journal that does justice to its name is the Figaro. 
It appeals to the curious and leisured class. It 
whispers the latest on dit into its client's ear, 
while recommending at the same time, on its 
front page, so wittily and insinuatingly, the 
newest brand of soap, that the Barber of Seville 
in person seems to be bending over him. Nation- 



THE NEWS OF THE DAY IN PARIS 137 

alism claims the Echo de Paris, with an admir- 
able foreign news service, and the Eclair ; but 
the one is pro and the other anti Anglo-Saxon. 
The Matin belongs to a class of newspaper 
whose main principle, or lack of principle, is the 
business principle, as does the Gil Bias, and in 
some measure the Journal. The Liberie is a 
moderate and well - spoken Republican sheet, 
preferring news to views. It traces its inspira- 
tions to Gambetta. With the oldest and most 
brilliant Republican record in France, the 
Journal des Debats, to which Taine, Renan, and 
all the great French thinkers since the Revolu- 
tion, have contributed, remains Republican ; but 
it has gradually veered round to a sage Con- 
servatism, and frankly sided with the Church 
during the debates on the Concordat. 

A word now as to the relative political im- 
portance and inner workings of the principal 
French papers. The most influential is the 
Temps, the most widely circulated the Croix. 
The Temps, which is edited by Senator Hebrard, 
is Progressist, Protestant, and Swiss. It favours 
the establishment of a working compact be- 
tween all the Republican groups on the basis 
of a moderate and conciliatory Liberalism. 
Some of the most valued writers on the Temps 
staff are of the Protestant faith, and in touch 



138 SENSATIONS OF PARIS 

with Geneva. Its financial information is of the 
best. The Croix is the organ of the cures, and, 
apart from the parent edition, pubhshed in 
Paris, there are nearly two hundred local Croix's, 
which circulate in different parts of the prov- 
inces, the most important being the Croix du 
Nord. Its influence is therefore vast. The 
Croix belongs to M. Vrau, a wealthy manufac- 
turer of sewing-thread at Rouen, who is backed 
by the Assumptionist Fathers. M. Vrau has 
also just purchased the Patrie and the Presse, 
formerly Nationalist organs, which came into 
the market in consequence of the bankruptcy 
of their owner, the Cotton King, M. Jules Jalu- 
zot. After the Croix, the most widely circu- 
lated papers are the Petit Journal and the Petit 
Parisien. Ex-Senator Privet, a Nationalist, con- 
trols the former, which was founded by Mari- 
noni, the inventor of the rotatory printing-press. 
The Petit Parisien is the property of Senator 
Jean Dupuy, formerly Minister of Agriculture, 
and, like the Petit Journal, its circulation ap- 
proaches the million. Its great rival is the 
Matin, which is the property of a company con- 
trolled by M. Bunau-Varilla, the brother of the 
Panama expert, and is the only exponent, now 
that the Petit Bleu has disappeared, of a yellow 
journalism ostensibly imitated from America. 



THE NEWS OF THE DAY IN PARIS 139 

The offspring of the Morning News, the first 
Anglo-Saxon paper on American lines published 
in Paris, which was owned by the late Dr. 
Thomas Evans, the American dentist and 
diplomat, but succumbed to the competition of 
the New York Herald, the Matin is edited by 
an adopted son and nephew of a former Paris 
correspondent of the Times. The Journal runs 
the Matin close both as to circulation and news, 
but attains to a much higher literary standard. 
It belongs to M. Letellier, the wealthy Govern- 
ment contractor, and, like the Matin, is con- 
stitutionally Ministerial. None of the other 
Paris papers attain to anything like the circula- 
tion of those just mentioned. The Figaro, 
which is the French paper best known abroad, 
lost caste with a section of its subscribers 
through the Dreyfus case, but is recovering its 
ground under the editorship of M. Gason Cal- 
mette. Its misfortunes have mainly benefited 
its younger rival, the Gaulois, which, under the 
direction of M. Arthur Mayer, is an uncompro- 
mising champion of Orleanism and the Church. 
The personal relations between M. Mayer and 
the Orleanist pretender, the present Due d' Or- 
leans, are officially known to be something less 
than cordial, but the editor of the Gaulois per- 
sists in being more Royalist than the " Roy,'' 



140 SENSATIONS OF PARIS 

just as he conducts an antisemitic campaign, 
although himself an Israelite. The Due d' Or- 
leans, in his lithographed organ, Correspondance 
Nationale, et Nouvelles, has declared strongly in 
favour of an alliance with England, and the 
concentration of all the national forces against 
Germany ; but M. Mayer, whose bons mots, 
especially the unconscious ones, are traditional, 
is opposed to the nation that burned Jeanne 
d'Arc, and sums up the present situation in the 
words, " Soyons nous-meme !" Another inde- 
pendent Monarchist organ which was hit hard 
by the Dreyfus affair (its editor went mad) is 
the Soleil, founded and raised to a fine pitch of 
prosperity by that brilliant historian and Aca- 
demician, the late Edouard Herve, but now 
sadly fallen from its high estate. There are 
three political daily papers in the provinces 
which deserve mention — the Petit Marseillais, 
the Depeche de Toulouse, and the Nouvelliste de 
Lyon. They are all Republican and Ministerial. 
Their success, however, is largely due to the fact 
that they are outside the range of the Petit 
Journal and the Petit Parisien. 

To describe in detail the many other, but less 
significant, organs of public opinion in France 
would need a volume, which by the time it was 
completed would have to be written all over 



THE NEWS OF THE DAY IN PARIS 141 

again ; for, fickle as a woman, tlie French Press 
is constantly changing its coat, or, at least, the 
cut and colour of it. You may safely say that 
no Paris paper is to-day, from the point of view 
of its political opinions, the same that it was 
ten, or even five, years ago ; but in respect to 
its editorial methods and general machinery, the 
French Press is an antiquated survival as com- 
pared with that of England and America. Its 
very print seems to be perfumed with memories 
of the eighteenth century. Its paper has a 
ghostly transparency, the thinness and greyness 
of a souvenir. Bright exceptions there are, but 
they are few, and the true Frenchman looks at 
them askance, holding their origin to be sus- 
picious and their attitude disloyal. 



CHAPTER X 
AMERICANS IN PARIS 

Someone has said that, whereas the American 
Colony " run " London, the reverse is the case 
in Paris. There is truth in this, though the 
statement must not be taken as final. Paris 
boasts, and for many reasons rightly, of being 
the City of Light (a Ville Litmiere), and would 
resent a suggestion that she was profoundly 
affected by foreign influences. None the less, 
Paris society, whether it likes to admit it or not, 
has been undergoing for years past a slow 
process of Americanization. Ever since the 
United States have been an independent nation 
the American has been popular in Paris. Just 
before the French Revolution broke out, Ben- 
jamin Franklin was the social hero of the hour. 
Everything was a la Franklin — the Franklin 
hat, the Franklin perruque, the Franklin stick. 
He was the first American to live at Passy. And 
Passy, the picturesque suburb to the west of 
Paris, where a seated statue of him by an 

142 



AMERICANS IN PARIS 143 

American sculptor preserves his memory, has 
since become a favourite place of residence for 
Americans, who like the quiet seclusion of its 
wide streets and leafy avenues, the comfort of 
its spacious villas, and the charm of its vast 
gardens, with their walls muffled in old-world 
ivy. 

With but one break since Benjamin Franklin's 
time, the French have been animated by a feeling 
of personal affection for Americans — for the 
" Sister Republic " — based upon a communion 
of democratic ideas, a feeling which has been 
extended to no other country. 

One notices this sentiment on all the public 
occasions that bring Americans and Parisians 
together. When the American Chamber of Com- 
merce gives its annual banquet, the speeches 
delivered by the president of the chamber, 
by the American Ambassador, who is always 
present, and the replies made to them by the 
representatives of the French Government, of 
whom the Prime Minister for the time being is 
generally one, show an absence of diplomatic 
reserve, which is lacking to similar functions 
organized by the Chambers of Commerce of 
other nationalities. The French Government 
adds a further distinction by surrounding the 
banqueting-hall with a special guard of honour, 



144 SENSATIONS OF PARIS 

composed of troopers of the Republican Guard 
in their brilHant helmets and breastplates. The 
entente cordiale with England, the alliance with 
Russia, are political and commercial under- 
standings with ancient rivals. The sisterly love 
which France cherishes for the great Trans- 
atlantic Republic, which she helped to create, 
persists unto the present day. However, it 
must be admitted, Parisians sometimes express 
a good-humoured alarm at what they call the 
Americanisafion of their capital. 

This is of two sorts. The influence of the 
American who is travelling is different from that 
of the American Colony, but it has had perma- 
nent and overwhelming consequences. All that 
is superficial in the life of Paris, all those special 
elements of Parisianism of which the most 
ignorant visitor has a vague knowledge before 
leaving his native country — for to him they are 
the chief attraction of Paris — have been of 
recent years affected by American influence as 
they never were before. The American traveller, 
whose numbers are yearly increasing, has revo- 
lutionized the " gay " side of the city. He has 
rendered it more pompous, and therefore less 
gay in the strictly Parisian sense, but more 
dazzling and more noisy. Montmartre, which 
was so truly and wittily Parisian, has undergone 






o 

O OS 

o 






AMERICANS IN PARIS 145 

an entire change. Its one-time gentle denizens 
— for, in spite of their extravagance of manners 
and audacity of imagination, they had the in- 
stinctive and natural gentleness of artists — have 
fled from their old haunts like a herd of giraffes 
from their native prairies before the invasion of 
a crowd of big-game shooters. It was the in- 
expressible charm of its feckless and reckless 
devotion to the twin divinities of Bohemia — Art 
and Beauty — which made Montmartre such a 
magnet : *' the hub of the universe," as one of 
its illustrious inhabitants baptized it. It has 
succumbed to its own popularity. Famous 
places of amusement, where formerly the long- 
haired poet with the flat-brimmed hat would, in 
the early hours of the morning, recite one of 
those humorous-pathetic poems so typical of 
Montmartre, amid the applause of a company in 
which painters, sculptors, writers, riffraff, and 
mere amateurs of beer-drinking and late hours, 
consorted without pose and on terms of equality, 
have now, while retaining their old " Chatnoir- 
esque " names, taken on a cosmopolitan and 
braggadocio air. The quaint pictures on the 
walls have given way to brilliant mirrors. 
Niggers in red swallowtail coats and black 
" smalls," dancing a cake-walk with Spanish 
ballerinas, have driven out poets and artists. 

10 



146 SENSATIONS OF PARIS 

Where beer flowed only champagne is now 
served. The men are in evening - dress, and 
nine-tenths of them are Americans. Pierrot and 
Pierrette have fled. Oddly enough to the 
American, fresh from New York or Boston, there 
is nothing in these extravagant scenes of gaiety 
which is in the least degree American. He 
enjoys the scene because it is so different from 
anything that he is accustomed to witness at 
home. Nor is it French. Yet, from the honest 
effort of the restaurant cook to produce Boston 
baked beans, to the strugglings of the orchestra 
with " rag-time " music, the whole is a distorted 
reflection, as in a freak mirror, of what the 
American might be imagined to want. The 
Parisian thinks it is American. By his applause 
the American confirms this view, but is all the 
time under the impression that the entertain- 
ment is typically Parisian. The experienced 
American knows full well that there is nothing 
of the real Paris in these weird performances. 
To the old-time inhabitant of the Montmartre 
Bohemia, which at the apogee of its sway sent 
an artistic, and at the same time humane and 
individual, throb throughout the intellectual 
world, this hybrid Americainisation is fruitful 
of sentimental regrets. ''Where," they mutter, 
adapting the language of their beloved patron. 



AMERICANS IN PARIS 147 

Villon — " where are the Black Cat and the Dead 
Rat of yester-year !" 

Time was — it was in the fifties — when the 
average Parisian of neglected education — and 
he was in the majority — was under a vague 
impression that all Americans were black. It 
was habitual with him to express astonishment 
at the appearance of a purely white specimen. 
To-day he is convinced that all Americans are 
millionaires, and in this sweeping generalization 
he is encouraged by the obstinate refusal of the 
Paris papers to refer to an American, visiting or 
residing in Paris, otherwise than as the rich- 
issime (enormously rich) Mr. and Mrs. So-and- 
So. This possession of enormous wealth is 
widely supposed to be coincident with an un- 
limited gullibility in all that concerns the 
acquisition of works of art. There is no one in 
Paris possessed of a bad copy from Rubens, a 
sham Corot, an eighteenth-century panel falsely 
attributed to Fragonard, who is not longing for 
an Americain richissime to drop in and buy 
it for a fantastic price. " Ah, my American !" 
sighs such a one (the American whom his fancy 
has so long depicted has at last become his 
chattel) — " when will he arrive ? Why does he 
tarry ? One million five hundred thousand 
francs is all that I ask for this unrivalled Gobelin 



148 SENSATIONS OF PARIS 

tapestry, originally presented to Benjamin 
Franklin by Louis XVI." (it is a bad Flemish 
" fake "). '' Alas ! if he does not come soon, I 
shall have to double the price !" It not in- 
frequently happens that the deluded Frenchman 
spends the rest of his life thus mentally beckon- 
ing to, and impatiently awaiting, the impalpable 
American of his dreams. The delusion, of 
course, is complete. The American demand for 
European works of art has caused a great rise in 
prices, but it would dawn on anybody but a 
Frenchman that the American millionaire is 
invariably a keen man of business, even when he 
happens to be a spendthrift, and that when he is 
not himself an expert in art matters, at least he 
knows the conditions of the market in which he 
is dealing, and surrounds himself with the neces- 
sary guarantees. 

What is responsible for a general rise in the 
price of living in those parts of Paris where 
Americans reside, either as casual visitors or 
permanent members of the colony, is the 
American habit of wastefulness. To this is 
largely due the general belief in Paris that all 
Americans have a great deal more money than 
they know what to do with. The French never 
waste anything. It was that trait in their 
character which, more than anything else, struck 



AMERICANS IN PARIS 149 

one of the wealthiest of America's millionaires 
when, a short time ago, he visited this country 
for the first time. Not a scrap of land that can 
possibly bear cultivation is lying fallow. The 
French housewife throws practically nothing 
away. Even the ultimate refuse of her dust- 
bin is carefully gone over every morning by 
diligent ragpickers, sorted out into a dozen 
different categories, and sold for further utiliza- 
tion. Such a narrow margin to life is incompre- 
hensible to the American, with his native sense of 
space and the boyish extravagance which is part 
of his national birthright. In Paris it is the 
passage and presence of Americans, especially of 
the womenfolk, which have largely contributed 
to raise prices all round in the wealthier districts, 
and have tripled the demands of hotel-keepers 
and dressmakers. But fifteen years ago there 
was not one good hotel in Paris. Now there are 
several. They have been built with a view to 
meeting the American demand. The American 
love of cleanliness has revolutionized the Paris 
hotel, and has proved a great boon to the city, 
having brought about a vast improvement in 
general sanitary conditions, and thus helped, 
without any doubt, to reduce the annual death- 
rate. This beneficial influence has been ex- 
tended far and wide in France by the numerous 



150 SENSATIONS OF PARIS 

families of American motorists, who have ex- 
plored every nook and corner of the provinces. 
Paris dressmakers have been inspired to more 
artistic efforts by the American demand. Genius 
is helpless without an intelligent Maecenas. If 
the French dressmakers had had to rely for the 
foreign patronage which constitutes so important 
an element of their clientele mainly on the 
English and the Russians, their art would have 
been like a ship waterlogged in a dead sea or 
stranded on barbarian shores. That their art 
has successfully avoided these two forms of 
shipwreck, by which it was seriously menaced 
twenty years ago, is due to the quick American 
appreciation of all that is novel and inventive, 
the American willingness to encourage, regard- 
less of expense, explorations along untrodden 
paths in the boundless realm of the beautiful, 
and, above all, to the unrivalled capacity of the 
American woman for giving quality and dignity 
to whatever she wears. 

\To understand the position occupied by the 
American Colony in Paris society, it must be 
remembered that, unlike any other European 
country of first-class importance, France is a 
republic, governed in the main by an aris- 
tocracy of intellect. There is an aristocracy of 
birth, with which many splendid historical tra- 



AMERICANS IN PARIS 151 

ditions are bound up, but the absence of a Court 
has deprived it of the central point to which it 
would naturally gravitate, and has caused it 
to break up into cliques. These cliques may, 
roughly speaking, be divided into the monar- 
chical set, which includes Royalists and Im- 
perialists, who, though politically at logger- 
heads, are united in the determination to have 
the best of all that life can afford ; the clerical 
set, austere and unyielding, coUet-monte (high- 
necked), as the French say, and socially the 
most exclusvie of all ; and the Academy set, 
which is bound to the republic by administra- 
tive and official ties, but has monarchical lean- 
ings. The combination of these three makes up 
the smart set of Paris, though the Academy is, 
socially speaking, so mixed that, were it not for 
the membership and predominating influence of 
certain aristocrats who cling pathetically to this 
institution as the last shred of officialdom within 
their grasp in the democratic state, Academi- 
cians would not be admitted as freely as they 
are to the fashionable circles. 

In these three sets, Americans, and more par- 
ticularly American women, play a prominent 
part. Their influence is considerable, and, if 
they do not actually lead as in England, the 
cause is independent of themselves. The diffi- 



152 SENSATIONS OF PARIS 

culties presented by a foreign language consti- 
tute a primary obstacle, though it is noticeable 
that no foreigners speak French (with the sole 
exception, perhaps, of the Russians) with so 
little accent and in so natural a manner as 
American women. Then there is the religious 
question. In the smart set of Paris there are 
Catholics and many Jews, but the Protestants 
could be counted on the fingers of one hand. 
Protestantism does not, at least in the case of 
foreigners, exclude from the smart set ; but those 
who hold its tenets are naturally on a basis of 
inferiority, so far as leadership is concerned, with 
regard to a class whose social and political tra- 
ditions are so intimately bound up with the pro- 
fession, if not with the practice, of their religion. 
The Paris Upper Ten class Protestants with 
Jews, and tolerate their society solely on account 
of their money. Undoubtedly, not a few bril- 
liant American men and women are to be met 
with in the highest Paris circles whose moral and 
intellectual influence on their environment is 
real and active, but it is above all individual. 
In London the American Colony has in a 
measure transformed the very basis upon which 
the social structure is built up. This is not the 
case in Paris. Obviously, a dispossessed and 
somewhat discredited aristocracy, without a 



AMERICANS IN PARIS 153 

head, such as that in France, is instinctively op- 
posed to innovation or reform. Otherwise its 
last shadow of prestige and claim on existence 
would disappear. 

^ Quite a number of eminent statesmen and 
influential public men in France have American 
wives. But in this country women do not 
address political meetings. They do not can- 
vass for their husbands at Parliamentary elec- 
tions as in England. They do not lay founda- 
tion-stones or open hospitals. At most they 
may preside at the baptizing of a new battleship. 
Yet in some important ways the influence of 
women in France is greater than in America or 
England. It is very difficult to get a Frenchman 
to look at any scheme, whether of a commercial 
or a political nature, until he has consulted his 
wife. It is the wife's opinion that prevails nine 
times out of ten. In public affairs, therefore, 
the Frenchman's American wife remains in the 
coulisses, behind the scenes, but nowhere more 
successfully than in France do women pull the 
wires. 

Certainly the smart set of Paris owes much of 
its lively modernity to the American woman. 
She has taught her French sister the value of 
self-reliance. Brought up almost invariably in 
a convent, the aristocratic French girl acquired 



154 SENSATIONS OF PARIS 

no real knowledge of the world until after her 
marriage. A cruel measure of self-effacement 
was imposed upon her. Her sole business was to 
look pretty and to dress to perfection, and she 
would have been little better than a lay figure 
if her natural French gift of liveliness had not 
made her, as a rule, a delightful and witty talker. 
To-day she plays tennis and golf, shoots, fishes, 
and hunts ; belongs, after her marriage, to a 
woman's club ; and her emancipation is almost 
entirely due to the precept and example of her 
American women friends. Withal she has lost 
nothing of her pristine charm. On the contrary, 
the American woman has taught her to walk, 
and initiated her into mysteries of hygiene, 
which were a closed book to her before, thus 
enabling her to enchance and preserve her 
natural beauty. If her conversation was always 
brilliant and gay, it is now rendered the more 
entertaining by her increased stock of knowledge 
and ideas, and the widening of her worldly 
horizon. 

It is as an intellectual and artistic centre that 
Paris most appeals to the American Colony. 
The great majority of the Americans who reside 
here for any length of time have a literary or 
artistic preoccupation of one kind or another. 
Even if they had none when they arrived, there 



AMERICANS IN PARIS i55 

is that in the atmosphere of Paris which forces 
some such interest upon them sooner or later. 
Only the veriest dolt could remain insensible to 
the aesthetical magnetism of a city of which it 
has been truly said that it daily trembles and 
quakes with ideas, so volcanic is the core of its 
mentality. It is fair to assert that in the artistic 
domain the Americans have given as much as 
they have received. In the world of paint the 
American colony has for years past played a con- 
spicuous role. It is in the main due to the 
American example, backed by the doUars of 
American picture-buyers, interested in new artis- 
tic formulas, that the rising generation of French 
painters has broken loose from the trammels of 
the old French academic school whose hard- 
and-fast doctrines were rapidly proving fatal 
to all individual development. Among foreign 
painters, recognized by the Frenchmen them- 
selves as being of the first class, who reside 
permanently in Paris, by far the largest con- 
tingent is supplied by the Americans. The 
American art students, men and women, form 
an important element of the colony in point of 
view of numbers. They have their clubs, whose 
artistic entertainments count among the most 
brilliant and amusing in Paris ; they have their 
special art shows, where the State not infre- 



156 SENSATIONS OF PARIS 

quently makes purchases ; and they have intro- 
duced baseball into the public playground of 
the old Luxembourg Palace gardens. These 
are features which distinguish the American 
Colony in Paris from that of London or of any 
European capital. The art colony has its off- 
shoots in the French provinces. At Giverny, 
in Normandy ; at Crecy, a medieval town in the 
Brie country, where the famous Brie cheese 
comes from ; at Pont-Aven, in Brittany ; at 
Auvers, where Corot painted his masterpieces ; 
at Nesles - la - Vallee, on the Oise, there are 
American art colonies, whose members live the 
simplest of simple lives in provincial inns, on the 
dining-room walls of which pictorial souvenirs 
of their sojourn are frequently to be seen. Some 
of these have aroused the cupidity of passing 
picture-dealers, but there is no instance on record 
of any of them having been sold. In the nature 
even of a French innkeeper there is a respectful 
sympathy for the artist, and an instinctive sense 
of etiquette in matters concerning art which 
would make such a transaction impossible. The 
Paris Ecole des Beaux Arts in all its depart- 
ments, but particularly that of architecture, 
attracts numerous students from the United 
States, and at no hour of the day can one pass 
along the old-fashioned streets which surround 



AMERICANS IN PARIS 157 

the Ecole, in the district which hes between 
the Louvre and Montparnasse, a veritable citadel 
of the American art colony, without hearing 
more American spoken than French. 
''The American resident in Paris bears a well- 
deserved reputation for rare courtliness of 
manners, a punctiliousness as concerns social 
etiquette which smacks of the ancicn regime, 
and a large and tasteful hospitality. Rightly 
or wrongly, the Parisians saddle the Englishman 
with an accusation of bearishness and arrogance. 
No doubt the great majority of the Americans 
who visit or reside in Paris are tries sur le volet — 
m other words, are gentlemen of birth and 
breeding ; while, naturally, the greater facilities 
of travel bring over a very different class of 
individual from London. One characteristic of 
the American Colony is its affection for the 
national flag. It may be safely said, without 
fear of contradiction, that no house, flat, or 
office, in Paris, tenanted by an American, is 
without " Old Glory " displayed somewhere. 
It may conspicuously drape an entire wall, or 
be merely a little object ornamenting a mantel- 
piece ; but of whatever size it may be, or wher- 
ever it may be, sooner or later you will dis- 
cover it. 
As for the American visiting Europe, he may 



158 SENSATIONS OF PARIS 

be pleased with the beautiful uniformity of 
Berlin, or prefer the total lack of uniformity 
which is the chief charm of London, but it is 
only in Paris that he is fully at home. The 
gaiety and good-humour which he brings with 
him from America find the readiest response 
from the Parisians. Their wit is of the same 
subtle and light-feathered quality as his own. 
Their women resemble his in beauty, elegance, 
and esprit. His palate fully appreciates the 
delicacy of their choicest wines. He sees eye 
to eye with them on most subjects — political, 
social, or artistic. When the good American 
dies he goes to Paris, in which fact there is a 
backhanded but well- justified compliment to the 
American Colony. 




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CHAPTER XI 
THE SHADOWS OF PARIS 

** And above all be careful of your planes !" 
This was, according to M. Felix Bracquemond, a 
pupil of a pupil of Ingres, the supreme dictum 
of the great classical French painter. Drawing, 
taught Ingres, is merely an indication of the 
luminous and sombre masses, and of the classi- 
fied light, which determine the values of the 
objects to be represented. 

The luminous and sombre masses, the shadows 
of this great capital, whose history covers so 
many hundreds of years, are instinct with 
delicate suggestions, with subtle lessons. Every 
city has the shadows that it deserves, the 
shadows that it makes for itself, just as the deeds 
of men and women colour and model their lives. 
The Old World and the New have their char- 
acteristic shadows — shadow-marks as full of 
significance, if not as tangible, as landmarks. 
In respect of its shadows, London differs no less 
from New York than Bruges from Pittsburg, 

159 



i6o SENSATIONS OF PARIS 

though the contrast may not be so striking. 
New shadows, varying in sharpness and inten- 
sity, are cast by new events, new people, new 
buildings ; and the old shadows linger even when 
that which gave them birth has long passed 
away, enveloping in a ghostly atmosphere the 
impalpable spirit-world in which we live with 
our ancestors. Not even the levelling of a house 
or a street can banish the old shadows altogether, 
can exorcise them wholly. Their immaterial 
presence still clings to the sites of razed cities 
and abandoned temples. They are, as it were, 
" earth-bound " for generations ; and when at 
last they take their leave, Time has indeed made 
a complete revolution, and so troubling have 
been their reproachful or merely reminiscent 
whisperings, their evocative note becomes so 
penetrating and acute by its mere attenuation, 
as change follows change, that our coarser 
natures not infrequently hail their departure 
with something like a feeling of relief. Shadows 
are the better half of history. 
"^ Modern Paris is statuesque. She poses, a 
magnificent stone statue ; and, generally speak- 
ing, her shadow is soft and blue, of great depth 
under an appearance of lightness. Her features 
are classical, her look and bearing imperial ; but 
wars and revolutions, the passions of love and 



THE SHADOWS OF PARIS i6i 

hate, have left deep Hnes upon her face and 
furrows upon her brow, which, if examined 
singly, may appear harshly sceptical, cruelly 
ironical, bitter or sad, but they do not destroy 
the antique nobility or the intellectual serenity 
of the expression as a whole. The mask of 
Napoleon with the smile of Voltaire ! The 
beauty of the bust is heightened, not marred, by 
its patina. 

^The old shadows commingle and contrast 
with the new. The sharply-cut, new- thrown 
shadows of tall twentieth-century mansions 
seem all the harsher and colder when they come 
in contact with the warm if dingy tones of some 
such quaint relic of pre-Revolutionary days as 
that little old patched and red-tiled wine-shop 
on the Quai de Passy, with its ragged festoons of 
ancient ivy still clinging to its roof, and all 
around it the stone-faced apartment-houses of 
the wealthy — a company of modern millionaires 
gazing in horror at a mummified sans-culotte. 
Then to go back to almost prehistoric times, to 
the brick and marble period of the Roman 
occupation, we have mystical shadows such as 
fall in deep amber and russet folds from the 
broken walls which now surround the Cluny 
Museum, and at different epochs have encircled 
a Roman bath and a Carlovingian abbey. The 

II 



i62 SENSATIONS OF PARIS 

Middle Ages still contribute their share to the 
shadows of Paris, notably on the quays, where 
the cross-hatching of the long fishing-rods bend- 
ing over the swirling Seine from the embank- 
ments and the river-shore give to the black and 
white of city, Seine, and sky, a quality and tone 
which you may look for in vain outside of a 
Callot etching. And, with their medieval dignity 
unimpaired by inheritance, the successors — 
themselves centenarians — of these ancient trees, 
whose roots ages ago were bathed by the Seine 
waters, turn aside from the surging life behind 
them, indifferent to the human bustle, as if 
nothing worthy of the notice of a tall and noble 
poplar had been or ever could be going on. The 
river breeze, with its song and cajolery, its 
eternal caress, is still their one playfellow — leur 
seul amour ! And their deep greens and shaggy 
masses of branch and foliage are those of the 
old French " verdure " tapestries, spun in 
homely wool by high-coiffed maidens and 
leather- jerkined youths long before the Gobelin 
looms, with their silk and gold threads, were 
set up in rivalry. Also of medieval shadow are 
the sugar-loaf turrets of the Palais de Justice 
which overlook these same Seine banks, recalling 
the steel-peaked caps and spiked armour of the 
feudal gardiens de la paix, grim and iron-handed 



THE SHADOWS OF PARIS 163 

sentinels over virtue. Here, indeed, is the 
antique shadow of the law. And hard by at 
Notre Dame, in deep shrouds of serene obscurity, 
tremulous with divine harmonies and perfumed 
with immemorial incense, from hundreds of 
saint-burdened niches, from the intricate tracery 
of the great rose-windows with their wheeling 
kaleidoscopes of painted glass, from the fluted 
pillars rising in pure jets of stone to dimmer and 
dimmer heights, from the roof of the vast nave 
poised like a moth on wings of Gothic lace, from 
the two mighty towers lifting their skeleton 
arms to heaven, falls the Shadow of the Church. 
From nowhere can the shadows of Paris be 
better observed than from the North Tower of 
Notre Dame on a sunlit afternoon, with, for 
preference, big bellying white clouds driving 
across the blue sky — immediately beneath you 
the myriad convolutions of the old Island City, 
through whose archaic streets, as through a 
brain (to quote the subtle poet of " The City 
of the Soul"), "men creep like thoughts"; 
farther away, the serried ranks of those chest- 
nut groves, lit up in spring by their lamp-like 
cones of bloom, which Napoleon I. planted as a 
guard to the ancient splendours of the Luxem- 
bourg ; farther to the left, the " brooding brow " 
of the Pantheon, the seventeenth-century mag- 



i64 SENSATIONS OF PARIS 

nificence of the two round towers of Saint- 
Sulpice, crowning the classical and reposeful 
lines of that vast Louis Quinze pile like the curls 
of a monumental peruke of the period ; then 
along the white Seine, with its score of sparkling 
bridges like so many rings on the white fingers 
of a Queen, to the blue and black and grey of 
succeeding divisions of the city, bluer as the 
eye reaches the more distant and modern 
quarters, to the Paris as yet unbuilt that lies 
bare and formless — terrains vagues — outside the 
fortifications, and beyond to the misty purple 
horizons and the wooded summits of Bellevue, 
Meudon, Saint -Cloud, and Versailles. From 
laughing youth to extreme old age, in all its 
moods grave and gay, the life-story of the great 
city lies before you, and at your side the " Pen- 
seur," that sphinx-hearted gargoyle of Notre 
Dame, which, in imagination at least, has gazed 
out since the Middle Ages upon the slowly- 
changing scene, and watched its multitudinous 
and multicoloured shadows with the prophetic 
mystery in its eyes and grim humour on its lips, 
thinks your thoughts and dreams your dreams ; 
for in the direct line of its vision rises up the 
Eiffel Tower, menacing symbol of a world yet 
to be born, monstrous finger-post of progress. 
Not less suggestive than the shadows of the 




EARLY MORNING SHADOWS IN THE RED MILL QUARTER 




THE MEDIEVAL SHADOWS OF THE CONCIERGERIE 

To face page 164 



THE SHADOWS OF PARIS 165 

Paris that dreams are the shadows of the Paris 
that thinks and works, and of the Paris that 
plays. 

In the Luxembourg quarter, where the aris- 
tocracy of intellect expands the edifying in- 
fluence of its grave presence, the shadows have a 
quality of their own, born of their environment, 
and determining it. Take any of its old streets 
— say the Rue Cassette. Owing to the solemn 
companionship of Saint-Sulpice, a stone's-throw 
away, and the aristocratic survival in its midst 
of the Hotel d'Hinnisdal, now the Catholic 
Institute, but until recently the town mansion 
of one of those great French families that have 
preserved intact their religious and social tra- 
ditions, the Rue Cassette wears an outward air 
of pious contemplation, a mask of spiritual 
decorum, the sedate livery, as it were, of a 
domestic of the upper clergy. Mainly com- 
posed of old-fashioned printing-houses, including 
that of the Archiepiscopate of Paris, no family 
Bible was ever bound in more mournful black 
or roan. Across the strait-laced fagades of its 
whitey-brown walls the shadows fall narrow like 
black stoles. Two moribund monarchist and 
clerical organs issue daily from its presses. 
Look at those high-pointed cobblestones which 
constitute its pave, its " metal " — resounding, 



i66 SENSATIONS OF PARIS 

too, like metal to the horses' hoofs and the 
wheels of passing vehicles. Note the delicate 
dark grey shadows which surround them at their 
base, growing less as the road gradually sinks to 
the curbstone on either side. By their constant 
ripple they suggest a babbling brook. The 
heightening of the dark grey shadows of these 
old-fashioned cobbles teaches you the meaning 
of that idiomatic expression le haul du pave. 
That part of the old Paris thoroughfare, before 
the introduction of trottoirs, or paved sidewalks, 
which was farthest away from the gutter, and 
therefore at the highest level, was the haul du 
pave, a favoured position, to hold which was the 
privilege of wealth and rank. In those days 
the gutters ran through the middle of the street, 
and the haut du pave was nearest to the wall, 
where the sidewalks now are. A few old 
thoroughfares paved in this way are still to be 
seen in Paris, notably the Rue Berton in the 
sixteenth arrondissement, and the Cour du 
Dragon at the corner of the Rue de Rennes. 
And though it is no longer permitted to the 
insolent lackeys of great nobles to push mere 
citizens into the gutters of these narrow streets, 
a certain aristocratic air still pertains to them 
by reason of these humble stones which yielded 
every prerogative to the '* carriage folk," and 



THE SHADOWS OF PARIS 167 

nothing to the pedestrian. In the Rue Cassette 
the hattt du pave is now in the middle, two httle 
strips of sidewalk having been added on either 
side ; but the cobbles are of the ancient shape, 
which for three centuries has not been modified, 
and their shadows are the same. Shaded in 
summer by trees, the tops only of which are 
visible above high walls that once surrounded 
extensive gardens, streets of the type of the 
Rue Cassette, equally sedate, erudite, and con- 
templative, are common enough on the left bank 
in the neighbourhood of Saint-Sulpice and in the 
University quarter. At most times of the day 
a subdued and harmonious illumination fills 
them, spreading over their surface a kind of 
rich atmospheric varnish, such as was used by 
the old masters, banishing all crudities of light 
and shade ; the very sunshine seems to reach 
these solemn alleys through a patine or veil, 
which exists perhaps only in our imaginations, 
but is suggested by the elderly spirit of the place, 
its almost silenced echoes. In any case the 
impression is there, and if so many of the 
dealers in old furniture and bric-a-brac have 
opened shop in the Rue de Rennes, which is a 
kind of highway through this old - world 
quarter, but yet so far from the track beaten by 
most English and American tourists, it must be 



i68 SENSATIONS OF PARIS 

that here are constant atmospheric quahties 
pecuharly precious to them, and that the back- 
ground, or rather the circumambience of grey- 
green wall, with the ancient boughs of chestnut- 
trees floating above, and the rich stippling of 
the cobbled roads, is just what is needed to 
show off their faded treasures to the fullest 
advantage. Certainly the exorbitant prices 
which they charge would amply justify this 
supposition. 

Here also the shadows of the human face tend 
to accentuate particular lines and develop 
typical expressions. In both look and dress, the 
Parisian who belongs as a native to these 
regions would present an unusual, if not 
eccentric, appearance in any other part of the 
world. He is both graver and greyer than the 
inhabitant of the right bank of the Seine. It is 
here that the hord-plat, the " stovepipe " hat 
with the flat and somewhat downward-slanting 
brim, forms part of the local dress, and the 
tfomhlon, or blunderbuss, of half a century ago, 
that wobbly revolutionary infant of the Im- 
perial beaver, is still to be seen, though its 
proportions, lessening with succeeding genera- 
tions, only just suffice to indicate a true but 
diminutive descendant of the giants. Fashion 
moves slowly in this neighbourhood, where 



THE SHADOWS OF PARIS 169 

plodding work and unostentatious comfort, 
proud characteristics of a highly cultivated 
bourgeoisie, are the order of the day. The 
frock-coat is constantly worn, and is long and 
ample in the skirts ; trousers disdain the pressed 
median line ; the brown boot is rare ; patent 
leather and the pointed toe are rarer still ; 
the elegancies are subdued, though real. The 
swallowtail coat, together with an elaborately 
pleated white shirt-front, is still de rigueur at 
marriages, at funerals, and on all occasions of 
official ceremony ; and these old-fashioned pleat- 
ings seem to be imitated or repeated in the 
thousands of white-slatted shutters that enframe 
the windows of all but the most modern houses, 
and give to them a fresh and dignified air of 
being always in clean linen. There is a pro- 
vincialism, too, in this well-laundered look which 
has its charm. There are streets in this working 
and thinking quarter of Paris which have all 
the appearance of respectable public notaries, 
such as, for instance, the Rue de Fleurus, 
with the Luxembourg Garden as its vernal back- 
ground. The older and smaller and darker 
streets take us back to earlier epochs of fashion, 
before Brummell had invented the clean collar, 
to the days of laced ruffles of such delicate 
cambric that they shunned a too frequent 



170 SENSATIONS OF PARIS 

starching, and remained beautiful, but yellow ; 
and there are quite poor streets where poets and 
students live, whose dilapidated shutters are 
nearly black. 

'That the left bank of the Seine monopolizes 
all that is treasurable in the ancient harmonies 
of line and shadow that enfold the heart and 
history of Paris is a popular error, but that the 
right bank is, on the whole, junior to the left 
cannot be denied, though, with eternity before 
us, the past is in a sense ageless. As Burger 
says : " Hin ist Hin !" But that the right bank 
is entirely distinguished from the left by the 
diversity of its shadows is perfectly true. In the 
zone of the comparatively new houses of which 
the Opera is the centre, the shadows, owing to 
the prevalence of fresh stone, are harder and 
bluer ; the wide streets, the broader pavements, 
leave a freer inlet to air and sun ; the planes are 
fewer, and the backgrounds have a relative 
absence of chiaroscuro. Where a bright and 
burning sun can play with unbroken rays upon 
such massive walls as those of the Madeleine and 
the Bourse, with their colonnades in pure Greek 
style, we have shadows so clear-cut and of such 
a rich deep blue as to transport us in imagination 
to those rugged and stony landscapes of the 
Midi and the Mediterranean, where, to quote a 



THE SHADOWS OF PARIS 171 

recent outburst of M. Jules Jaures, the sun 
shines with such force upon the bare rocks that 
the birds as they wing past se dedouhlent (double 
themselves) as in a mirror. There are no such 
luminous effects as these on the left bank, where 
the bluest shadows are in the outlying and 
artisan quarters, but are as hard, dreary, and 
cold, as the lives of the toiling folk who dwell 
there. The Chamber of Deputies and the official 
buildings that are in line with it, the palace of the 
President of the Chamber, and of the Minister 
of Foreign Affairs, forming an architectural se- 
quence to the Bridge and the Place de la Con- 
corde, the Madeleine, and the Rue Royale, 
although actually on the left bank, belong, by 
the nature of their shadows and planes, to the 
right bank. They speak its language and obey 
its customs. The zone of the right bank extends 
as far as the Faubourg Saint-Germain to the 
south, and to the Pont des Arts on the east. Its 
line of demarcation literally cuts in two the 
Chamber of Deputies, of which the fa9ade 
opposite the Seine is a Parliamentary incrusta- 
tion upon the more ancient town residence of 
the Duchesse de Bourbon, the real front of which 
looks towards the Faubourg Saint-Germain, and 
is of the left bank proper. Such overlapping is 
inevitable in a city where centralizing tendencies 



172 SENSATIONS OF PARIS 

are constantly on the increase, whose adminis- 
trative maw is ever opening wider ; but in all 
other respects the left bank remains intact 
without any influence from the right to seriously 
affect its intimate spirit, and the right continues 
its development towards the west and north, 
multiplying streets of classic line, which with 
their tree borders are merely green and white 
in summer, or white and grey-black in winter. 
Then, after a lengthy stroll, we reach the nine- 
teenth-century splendour, the real if somewhat 
insipid beauty of that vast avenue leading to 
the Bois de Boulogne, with its plethora of florid 
brick and decorated stone and blue slate, 
recalling the rigid domestic propriety, the 
flounced crinolines and shot silks of the mid- 
Victorian era, which was once named, and in 
point of shadow and souvenir still is, the 
Avenue of the Empress. We have passed 
through the Ministerial and Ambassadorial 
suburbs, neat and patched with gilt like a diplo- 
matic uniform ; we have left behind us that 
other section of Paris that thinks and works. 

To the west, but farther to the north, lies a 
vast and seething quarter, of all periods and of 
none, whose streets are populous and squalid, 
or so solitary and silent as to appear to be 
hushing up a crime ; but they have this in com 



THE SHADOWS OF PARIS 173 

mon, that their shadows are, as it were, deaf and 
dumb, without receptivity or power of ex- 
pression, being, indeed, merely shadows of 
shadows — shadows of scenes which are dormant 
during the day, and whose echoes are for the 
moment mute. This is the so-called European 
Quarter, and it is here that Paris plays — a 
quarter that gets up very late in the morning, 
in a state of somnolent frowsiness, pallid, and 
not over-tidy, the dejection of mal aux cheveux, 
or katzenjammer, visible upon its tired face, in 
its sordid deshabille. Those eyes of a street 
which are its windows remain in the European 
Quarter, or at least with respect to most of its 
dwelling tenements, sleepily closed till noon, 
and in some cases for the whole of the day, only 
opening at supper-time, when the rattle of cabs 
and carriages and automobiles on the cobbled 
pavements below announce that the nocturnal 
pandemonium of Montmartre and Clichy and 
Rochechouart, of the Place Blanche, the Place 
Pigalle, and the Rue Notre Dame de Lorette, is 
once more in full swing. Then the Paris that 
plays becurtains and bemantles itself in vast 
masses of shadow, the depth and concealing 
powers of which are intensified and added to by 
the brilliance of the illumination which streams 
from cafes and restaurants and the fa9ades of 



174 SENSATIONS OF PARIS 

music-halls and dancing-saloons, from a thou- 
sand and one dens of delirium and doubtful 
delight. Draped in these fantastic shadows, the 
circular Place Clichy and Place Pigalle, with 
their flaring all-night houses, the Abbaye de 
Theleme, the Rat Mort, or Dead Rat, the 
Nouvelle Athenes, or New Athens (save the 
mark !), resemble huge merry-go-rounds, in- 
vaded by madmen and madwomen. The whole 
European Quarter turns itself into a roaring 
Vanity Fair ; and when at last the frantic scene 
is over, its black masses of shadow, of which the 
blazing sails of the Red Mill are perhaps the 
most notable luminous foyer, gradually fade 
into relative nothingness, and powerless now 
to hide the red-handed Apache, or " Thug," 
from the belated reveller, his unsuspecting prey, 
having lost all character, or raison d'etre as 
shadows of Paris that plays, as shadows of evil 
or shadows of death, they flee the daylight, 
what time a pale sunbeam creeps along the 
balconies of the Rue de Clichy like some shame- 
ful yellow cat climbing furtively home at dawn 
after a night's debauch upon the tiles. 



CHAPTER XII 
A PARISIAN HOLIDAY-MAKING 

If you enter No. 8, Rue Maubeuge, an uphill, 
unimpressive, but busy street in Paris, which 
connects as with a long tube the " quarter " of 
the Opera with that of the Northern Railway 
Station ; if you pass up the dingily carpeted 
staircase to the fourth-floor (there is no lift in 
the house, which is still lit with gas), you will 
And yourself standing on a worn mat in front 
of an oak-stained door, affixed to which is a 
well-polished brass plate, with the words en- 
graved on it : 

M. Adolphe Delprat* 

ARCHITECTE . 

Monsieur Delprat is a Parisian of the type 
known as the hon bourgeois, or respectable citizen 
of moderate means. So his flat is composed of 
only four pieces, or living-rooms — namely, a 
dining-room and a sitting-room, which look out 
on to the street, and two chambres, or bedrooms, 

175 



176 



SENSATIONS OF PARIS 



which receive their Hght from the courtyard at 
the back of the house. It has, moreover, an 
'' entrance," which to the uninitiated mind 
might seem even more indispensable than the 




YOU WILL FIND YOURSELF STANDING ON A WORN MAT. 



staircase. But in Paris houses an entree means 
an entrance-hall, often little more, as in the 
present case, than a narrow corridor, in which it 
is just possible to place a hat-rack and an um- 



A PARISIAN HOLIDAY-MAKING 177 

brella-stand. There is also a diminutive room 
which Monsieur Delprat uses as an office, having 
filled it with a wooden board on trestles, and 
two cane-bottomed chairs. Architect's instru- 
ments and plans strew the wooden board. Then 
there is a kitchen exactly a yard and a half 
square, and on the sixth-floor is a chambre de 
bonne the same size as the kitchen, which is the 
bedroom of Monsieur Delprat's one domestic ser- 
vant, a bonne d toutes mains, who works steadily 
fourteen hours a day in return for thirty 
shillings a month wages, with lodging, board, 
and washing. Monsieur Delprat pays two thou- 
sand francs (£80) a year for his flat, including fifty 
francs (£2) for the chambre de bonne, and it is 
now ten years that he has lived in it with his 
wife, one daughter, and a son. He and his wife 
occupy one of the bedrooms, his daughter the 
other, and the son sleeps in the dining-room 
on a folding-bed, which during the daytime is 
disguised as a sofa. Madame Delprat is from 
Bordeaux. She has the Bordelais features, 
round and classical, somewhat full, with black 
hair and dark eyes, and she has something of 
the Bordelais languor. Her daughter, Made- 
leine, is now seventeen, a tall fair girl with dark 
eyes, livelier than her mother. The son, Louis, 
is fifteen, and an externe, or dayboy, at the 

12 



178 SENSATIONS OF PARIS 

neighbouring College Chaptal. He is thin, 
sallow, angular, and talks with lightning volu- 
bility. His sister teases, bullies and caresses 
him in turn. He treats her as a kind of being 
apart, whose ideas are necessarily outside the 
sphere of reason. She revenges herself by 
passing criticisms on his occupations, and getting 
him into scrapes with his father. His constant 
retort is : " Thou art a girl. Thou understandest 
nothing therein !" He bears no malice, and 
keeps up such an incessant chatter about pho- 
tography, postage-stamps, school politics, and the 
invention of a new flying-machine, that the 
sarcasms of Madeleine have exactly the same 
effect upon him as have the midgets and flies 
with which a chauffeur comes into stinging col- 
lision when whirling along at the rate of sixty 
miles an hour. His father " destines him for 
commerce," but his secret intention is to be an 
airman. There are thousands of Parisian boys 
like Louis, leading identically the same lives, 
just as there are thousands of Parisian girls cut 
to the same pattern as is Madeleine, vivacious, 
active young creatures, revelling in the simple 
pleasures of their little world. 

Monsieur Delprat is tall, lanky, with an 
immense shock of reddish-brown hair and a big 
reddish beard. His expression is one of con- 



A PARISIAN HOLIDAY-MAKING 179 

stant amazement, which is ready at any moment 
to develop into indignation. Some of his friends 
describe him as a hurluberlu, others as a ahuri, 
and both words characterize him well enough. 
His mind is mostly in a state of hurly-burly. 
The ahuri is the chronically flabbergasted man. 
It is wonderful how many ahuris there are 
among French architects of the less prosperous 
kind. Can it be that architecture, more than 
any other art, fosters the grain of insanity in- 
separable from genius ? Monsieur Delprat 
would not accuse you of exaggerating if you 
were to describe him as a genius, but nonethe- 
less he has been obliged, in order to earn a living, 
to limit his architectural activity almost ex- 
clusively to the gevance, or management of 
apartment houses ; in other words, he is a land- 
lord's agent. This rate, or half -failure of a man, 
is, without knowing it, one of the happiest of 
human beings, for, like all disappointed people, 
he has the whole field of criticism open to him, 
and his excursions across it are frequent and 
varied. He is a frantic politician, opposed to 
any government for the time being, and is a 
fervent antisemite. To listen to him, France 
is the most hopeless, helpless, and ill-governed 
of countries. He is constantly holding up to her 
the examples of America and England, where 



i8o SENSATIONS OF PARIS 

he has never set foot. " Ah/' he says, " how 
differently the EngHsh would have managed that ! 
In America, my dear sir, it is impossible for 
such things to happen. In England or America 
the law enforces this, or the nation insists upon 
that.' ' England and America would be very odd 
places indeed if Adolphe Delprat's Utopian 
descriptions of their customs and laws bore any 
resemblance to the truth. 

With the interest of his wife's dot, Monsieur 
Delprat's income is £480 a year, of which he 
manages to put by about £20, and to have ^^30 to 
spare for an annual fortnight's outing with his 
family to the seaside. Every summer the 
question where they shall go is debated with 
fervour by the Delprat family. 

Already in the middle of June the street 
hoardings in Paris are covered with advertise- 
ments Qf rural and seaside resorts. Le Treport, 
on the Norman border, is personified by a 
charming girl, with yellow hair, tripping back 
from her dip in the sea. At Sables d'Olonne, 
in Brittany, a pretty Breton peasant-woman is 
represented in national costume, sitting in the 
shrouds of a sailing-ship. To Jean Veber, the 
illustrious caricaturist, is due a fantastic depict- 
ment of the Hotel de la Foret at Fontainebleau, 
where, so the public is informed, there is neither 



A PARISIAN HOLIDAY-MAKING i8i 

** casino, theatre, nor tziganes," but, in place 
of them, " urbanity, good cooking, and French 
comfort." In the foreground of Monsieur Veber's 
composition, in which the gnarled oaks have 
foliage which resembles clouds of blond smoke. 




THE STREET HOARDINGS ARE COVERED WITH ADVERTISE- 
MENTS OF SEASIDE RESORTS. 

a bandy-legged landlord is opening wide his 
arms to a number of little fat dwarfs who have 
arrived in an automobile apparently carved out 
of a pumpkin In a highly-coloured plan, Sainte- 
Adresse, " the Nice-Havrais," a watering-place 



i82 SENSATIONS OF PARIS 

entirely built and owned by the millionaire pro- 
prietor of a vast emporium at Montmartre, looks, 
with its perfectly straight streets, rising tier 
upon tier in front of a very blue sea, covered 
with strange craft, like an agglomeration of 
doll's-houses. But it has the spick-and-span 
neatness and newness which appeal to most 
middle-class Parisians. On another poster, an 
elderly Parisian, with white eyebrows, spectacles 
poised on the tip of his nose, and a huge pointed 
straw hat, sits, bare-armed and bare-legged, in 
a punt lazily fishing. This scene is laid at Vaires, 
on the Marne, at twenty kilometres' distance 
from Paris. At Cabourg, where the main at- 
tractions are " sl new kursaal, golfing, lawn- 
tennis, and yachting," two unusually stout ladies 
are figured in the water, bathing and splashing 
each other, one in a black, the other in a red 
costume. The artist in this case is plainly an 
impressionist. 

Louis Delprat is describing these posters in his 
voluble way at the dinner-table, when his father, 
letting the ladle fall into the soup with a splash, 
exclaims : '* Cabourg ! But thou art mad, my 
poor child ! Thou thinkest not therein ! Every- 
thing at Cabourg costs the eyes of the head. 
It is the most expensive place in France, and, 
besides, chock-full of Jews. Thou wouldst not 



A PARISIAN HOLIDAY-MAKING 183 

that thy father should thither go." Further- 
more, says Monsieur Delprat, Cabourg is so 
crowded with automobiles that all the roads 
around it are quite unsafe for people on foot. 
Naturally, in a democratic country like France, 
it suffices to be rich enough to possess a motor- 
car to have the right to endanger human lives 
with impunity. Now, in America or England 
such a thing would not be tolerated for a 
moment. " Oh, bother England and America !" 
interposes Madeleine undutifully. " Why not 
go to Trouville ? I am sick of the petits trous 
pas chers (the inexpensive little holes) which 
you and mother are so fond of. They are just 
as dear in the long-run." But her father, after 
begging her to be calm and reasonable, maintains 
that during the very brief season at Trouville 
everything is abominably dear and proportion- 
ately bad to an even greater degree than at 
Cabourg, and that there is nothing more mortally 
dull than a fashionable resort when the season 
is over. The chief charm of Trouville, the 
lovely winding road along the coast to the mouth 
of the Seine at Honfleur, called the " Corniche 
Normande," because it is, if anything, more 
beautiful than the famous " Route de la Cor- 
niche " at Cannes, has also been spoilt by in- 
numerable automobiles driven at frantic speed 



i84 SENSATIONS OF PARIS 

by arrogant and cosmopolitan parvenus. Viller- 
ville, between Trouville and Honfleur, is far 
prettier, and, though cheaper, attracts a better 
class of visitor. " I know one delightful inn 
there," says Monsieur Delprat, " the Hotel des 
Parisiens — embowered in roses and honeysuckle, 
where the pension, including the room, does not 
exceed eight shillings a day. Villerville, more- 
over, has an ancient fame for its mussels, and, 
as you know very well, your poor father adores 
mussels, which is, I suppose, the reason why 
Madame Delprat never dreams of having them 
on the table." 

Indolent Madame Delprat, who helps in the 
kitchen, hates mussels because they take so long 
to clean, but she answers : " I am so dreadfully 
afraid of them." " Bah !" murmurs her hus- 
band. He admits, however, that the bathing 
at Villerville is poor, owing to mud deposits 
from the Seine. Even at Trouville the water 
is more brackish than salt, and it is only at 
Deauville, Trouville's aristocratic suburb, that 
you come to the real sea. But Deauville is one 
of the many places where it is a rule in the 
hotels to dress for dinner, and this Monsieur 
Delprat resolutely refuses to do. " I agree," he 
says, " with Whistler, the great American 
painter (ah, there was an artist !) who said 



A PARISIAN HOLIDAY-MAKING 185 

one might just as well dress to sit in an omnibus 
as go dressed to a table d'hote." For this reason 
fitretat is barred, though greatly frequented by 
Americans and English ; but it is strait-laced 
and formal, and too much uphill for Madame 
Delprat, who hates walking. As for Sainte- 
Adresse, Monsieur Delprat trusts that his chil- 
dren will kindly remember that their father is 
an architect of some distinction, who, but for 
the notoriety of his political opinions, would 
long ago have been created a Knight of the 
Legion of Honour, and that they will therefore 
have sufficient respect for him not even to 
mention Sainte-Adresse in his hearing. Only in 
a country on the eve of collapse would such an 
architectural abomination have been permitted. 
Boulogne is pestered by the cheapest class of 
Saturday to Monday excursionists, and Monsieur 
Delprat can never forget spending twelve mortal 
hours on a hundred-mile excursion to the sea in 
the company of his late maiden aunt. She had 
taken her canary-bird with her so that it also 
might benefit from the sea-air ! It died the 
next day from nervous exhaustion, and Monsieur 
Delprat was subsequently omitted from his 
aunt's will. Dieppe attracts Madeleine on 
account of its casino, with the " little horses " 
(for both she and her mother are fond of a 



i86 SENSATIONS OF PARIS 

cheap gamble) ; but Monsieur Delprat, while 
recognizing that the daily spectacle of the 
British passengers arriving from Newhaven is 
morally invigorating, objects to the dirtiness 
and narrowness of the Dieppe streets, the 
inferiority of the cuisine in the Dieppe hotels, 
and to the lack of shade on the promenades. 
Besides, the beach is pebbly. Le Treport has 
an evil-smelling harbour. Vaires, he insists, is 
far more to his liking than any seaside place. 
** I don't know," he argues, " why you should 
all be so mad on spending your holiday by the 
sea. There is no rest to be got there. The 
sea is always making a noise. It rants, roars, 
screams, and whistles, and is never still for a 
minute." Madeleine exchanges a look with her 
mother. Vaires, acording to Monsieur Delprat, 
is far more the typical villegiature, or holiday 
resort, of the real Parisian. He grows senti- 
mental over the recollection of his boyhood's 
vacations spent on the banks of the green and 
crystal-clear Marne. Joinville-le-Pont, Nogent- 
sur-Marne, Le Perreux, were then at the height 
of their glory — places fallen now, owing to the 
outspread of Paris, which has practically swal- 
lowed them up, to the general preference for the 
seaside, and the passion for long distances 
which came in with the bicycle and the auto- 



A PARISIAN HOLIDAY-MAKING 187 

mobile. But, oh, the joys of the httle river- 
side pavilion, or cottage, with its big garden 
filled with flowers and vegetables and fruit- 
trees, en plein rapport, with laden branches. 
It was but a cab-drive to get there ! No need 
of railways. Boating, fishing, and bathing, were 
the day-long amusements. The boats would be 
called " tubs " nowadays, but you could " do " 
the tour de la Marne with them, that adorably 
picturesque loop which the Marne makes at its 
junction with the Seine, and some adventurous 
spirits had even rowed in them as far as 
Meaux. What fritiires of gudgeon and roach 
were caught ! And the bathing in the river — 
hundreds of pretty Parisiennes jumping in and 
out of the water from the vast bathing pontoons. 
Their laughter could be heard almost as far as 
Paris. But all this is now a thing of the past. 
Even the pontoons have been removed, and the 
little Parisiennes have gone farther afield ; in 
fact, Paris-Plage is now about the nearest place 
where you are likely to find them. But Paris- 
Plage is a bit too democratic for Madame 
Delprat and Madeleine. It is there that you 
are sure to meet your concierge, and the grocer 
and his family from the corner of the street, 
conditions incompatible with " a thorough 
change." Veules-les-Roses, close to Valery in 



i88 SENSATIONS OF PARIS 

the Norman Caux country, has a romantic name 
which appeals to Madeleine's imagination, but 
her father holds that its former unsophisticated 
charms are on the decline, that its roses have 
withered, and, moreover, the shadow of the 
swallow-tail coat (Monsieur Delprat uses the 
expression queue de morue, or " cod-tail ") has 
fallen on its tables d'hote. Clearly, the choice 
for the Delprats lies between the coasts of 
Normandy and Brittany. Louis does not care 
where they go, as long as the roads are fit for 
bicycling and he can fly a kite on the seashore. 
In Brittany prices rule lower than in Normandy, 
and the scenery, if not so pretty, is more varied ; 
but, the distances being greater, the travelling 
expenses are double or treble. Monsieur Delprat 
proposes to study the special conditions for 
" collective family tickets " on the Northern 
line, and sends Louis for the latest " Chaix," or 
Official Railway Guide. His anger is excessive 
when he is referred in the ordinary " Chaix " to 
the " Illustrated Chaix Guide " for this par- 
ticular information. " A trick to make you 
buy two books ! Ah, France ! France !" he 
mutters. But, from the data supplied by the 
other railway companies, he gathers that for 
the first three persons of a family party there 
is no reduction, but for every additional person 



A PARISIAN HOLIDAY-MAKING 189 

the price of the return ticket is the same as that 
of a single ticket. Two children aged from 
three to seven count as one person. The family 
is defined as consisting of father, mother, sons, 
daughters, father-in-law, mother-in-law, uncles, 
aunts, and domestic servants. By a special 
privilege the head of the family — and this, at 
least, says Monsieur Delprat, is an intelligent 
arrangement — may return alone to his point of 
departure. In Paris and some of the larger 
French towns the collective family ticket must 
be applied for half an hour before the train starts, 
but three hours beforehand is the limit at all 
other stations. A similar rule applies to the 
voiture d galerie, or cab, with a roof railed in to 
secure the baggage. It transports the family 
from any address in Paris to or from the station^ 
and is supplied by the railway companies for 
two francs fifty centimes, or two shillings. It 
must be ordered at least six hours in advance, 
but if ordered earlier an additional fee of one 
franc is charged. Monsieur Delprat expresses 
the utmost contempt for these chinoiseries {cM- 
neseries), as he calls them. The same ridicu- 
lous system prevails in the French theatres, 
where you pay more for your tickets if you buy 
them in advance, when reasonably you ought, 
in the circumstance, to pay less. 



iQO SENSATIONS OF PARIS 

It is not until some days after this inconclusive 
debate at the dinner-table that the Delprats 
finally decide to spend the holidays at Fort- 
Mahon, a new seaside place on the Northern 
line halfway between Saint- Valery and Berck. 
Saint-Valery itself they hold to be too near the 
mouth of the Somme, while Berck is objectionably 
full of little consumptive patients belonging to a 
local sanatorium. From a neatly-printed book- 
let, illustrated with photographs, and sent to 
him by the Initiative Committee of Fort-Mahon 
— an act of enterprise to which he approvingly 
attributes an American inspiration — Monsieur 
Delprat discovers that the proprietor of the 
principal hotel there is an old schoolmate, from 
whom he can, therefore, expect a specially 
hospitable welcome. Fort-Mahon is the nearest 
sand-beach to Paris, whence it can be reached 
in three hours. It is a family place. Madame 
Delprat will be able to spend all her days lolling 
in a cahane, or little summer-house, built of 
planks, on the sand, and facing the sea. The 
hire of one of these diminutive constructions 
will not exceed twenty francs. Among the 
various amusements promised by the booklet is 
a kite competition, which will amuse Louis. 
Madeleine will have to do without a casino and 
" little horses," but the Committee of Fetes, 



A PARISIAN HOLIDAY-MAKING 191 

presided over by a real Marquis, seems to be a 
" live " corporation, and what with innumerable 
dances, photographic competitions, torchlight 
processions, musical festivals, rabbit-hunts, the 
Beach Fete on the first Sunday in August, 




MADELINE IS NOW SEVENTEEN. 

and the picturesque Benediction of the Sea, 
Madeleine will find ample scope for frolic and 
flirtation. The magnificent chapel of the Saint- 
Esprit, a gem of late Gothic architecture, in 
the neighbouring village of Rue, will supply 
Monsieur Delprat with an endless subject of 



192 SENSATIONS OF PARIS 

controversy with his neighbours at the table 
d'hote. So the Delprats fix the day for their 
departure. Their " collective family ticket " 
costs them four pounds eight shilhngs. They 
pay an extra eight shillings for the registration 
of their excess baggage, and a desperate scene 
occurs between Monsieur Delprat and the 
baggage clerk, who has tried to pass off upon 
him a Spanish five-franc piece. At last, after 
a hot struggle through the crowds that are also 
leaving Paris for the holidays, the Delprats are 
safely seated in a second-class carriage, of which 
they occupy the four corners. Madame Delprat 
has already opened a packet of sandwiches, and 
is eating them, in spite of the fact that she 
breakfasted only an hour previously. She 
champions that ancient belief still widely spread 
in Europe, that, on any railway journey lasting 
more than an hour, it is imperative to take 
stringent precautions against suddenly dying 
from hunger en route. Monsieur Delprat is 
attracting more or less sympathetic attention 
from the six other people in the carriage by his 
violent denunciations of the French monetary 
system, apropos of his dispute with the baggage 
clerk, who, he swears, was a Jew. " In what 
other civilized country in the world," he asks, 
"is it permitted to circulate certain foreign 



A PARISIAN HOLIDAY-MAKING 193 

coins to the exclusion of certain others ? An 
ItaHan five-franc piece is good, but a Spanish 
one you must refuse. If the figure of Helvetia 
on a Swiss coin is sitting down, you may accept 
it ; if it is standing up, you mustn't ; or, according 




A DESPERATE SCENE OCCURS WITH THE 
BAGGAGE CLERK. 

to some people, it is the other way round. 
Nobody seems to know. If Louis Philippe is 
crowned on a one-franc piece, well and good ; 
if he's not crowned, then you've been swindled. 
Do you suppose that in America such folly 

13 



194 SENSATIONS OF PARIS 

would be tolerated for an instant ?" And as a 
bilious-eyed listener volunteers a hesitating 
" No," Monsieur Delprat, emboldened, launches 
into a noisy demonstration of the general 
superiority of Anglo - Saxon institutions over 
those of France. He calls attention to the 
notice posted up in the carriage in French and 
English, ** II est dangereux de se pencher en 
dehors " (Dangerous to lean out), and shows 
his son Louis that it takes exactly eight words 
to say in French what can be said in English 
in four. He attacks the French judicial system 
as tending to bring about the miscarriage of 
justice, while the French marriage laws, he says, 
are responsible for the decline in the birth-rate, 
and actually encourage race suicide. His dis- 
course is beginning to get on the nerves of his 
audience, and an explosion from Madeleine is 
imminent, when the ticket-collector, who is a 
wag, good - humoredly interrupts him with : 
" Now, Monsieur Roosevelt — tickets please !" 



fq 



^^RlWll 


^^^^^^^V^^ III ' 






CHAPTER XIII 

THE VOICE OF PARIS 

. . . Like banners, from those turrets old, 
Your bells shake forth their clouds of gold ! 
Their voice is in the light and shade. 

The radiant gloom, 
Which bathe this Renaissance fa9ade. 
It lingers in the dark cascade 

Of that green fountain-tomb, 
With black leaves spread, 
Where Polyphemus bends his head, 

I And all around 
This temple's domed and brooding brow, 

With laurel crowned, 

It wreathes the incense of its sound. 
It shrives the dying flowers, and now 
Chases the swallows out of sight. 
Rising and falling with their flight ! 

Thus a poet has described the chiming of the 
bells of Saint-Sulpice Church heard from the 
Luxembourg Gardens, with the ancient Renais- 
sance Palace of the Luxembourg in front of him, 
and to the right Marie de Medicis' funereal 
fountain and the incomparable dome of the 
Pantheon. Nothing characterizes a city more 
than its noises. An American friend of mine 

195 



196 SENSATIONS OF PARIS 

was driven away from Venice, which is said to 
be the quietest city in the world, by the noise 
of voices. With no horse traffic, no motor 
omnibuses, no electric tramways, to drown it 
with their din, the human voice acquires in 
Venice a resonance, a force of penetration, which 
it lacks in other centres of activity, so that 
conversation carried on between two people in 
a Venetian street, even in a low tone, is so 
acutely audible as to cause torture, if the ear 
upon which it persistently falls be at all delicate 
or sensitive. When Alphonse Daudet returned 
from his first and last visit to London, some 
ten or twelve years ago, he told me that what 
had struck him most was the silence of the 
London streets as compared with those of Paris. 
This impression was, he thought, mainly to be 
ascribed to the coldness and taciturnity of the 
English population. Perhaps if he were to be 
in London now he would have reason to modify 
his opinion. There is certainly more vocal 
noise in the streets of all the European capitals 
than there was a decade ago, and it is on the 
increase. The foreigners are more numerous, 
facilities for travel having so much developed, 
and it is the tendency of all foreigners to be 
vociferous when travelling. In London, par- 
ticularly, the drifting population of French 



THE VOICE OF PARIS 197 

visitors is ten times what it was at the beginning 
of the century, and their gesticulatory talka- 
tiveness violently contrasts with the mono- 
syllabic stolidity of the natives. '' Straight 
ahead !" says the London ** bobby," if you ask 
him the way, or he may content himself with a 
mere jerk of the forefinger. " Mais nous n'avez 
qu'a poursuivre directement cette rue dans 
laquelle vous vous trouvez, monsieur, et vous 
verrez la maison en question au coin de la 
premiere rue a votre gauche." " Je vous 
remercie infiniment, monsieur." " II n'a a pas 
de quoi, monsieur." Thus the French " agent," 
the policeman of Paris. Or he will carefully 
enumerate the streets that you must not take ; 
and if he happens to wear upon his arm a 
tricolour band with the word "Interpreter" or 
" Dolmetscher " upon it, he will repeat his 
information in English or German with the same 
discursiveness. 

Paris is eloquent. Above the multifarious 
noises of the street, which are of a mechanical 
origin, or may proceed from the brute creation, 
there constantly arises the wail of protestation, 
the yell of denunciatory wrath. Two Paris 
drivers collide with each other, or narrowly 
escape a collision. " Ours !" (Bear !) shouts 
one. " Fourneau !" (Fire - stove !) bellows 



198 SENSATIONS OF PARIS 

the other. If damage has been done, a poHce- 
man intervenes. He produces a pocket-book 
and a pencil, and takes down in longhand a 
verbatim report of the speeches on both sides. 
During the careful performance of this task a 
crowd collects. The debate becomes general. 
Two parties are formed. Orator vociferates 
against orator. The language is not always 
parliamentary, but, if a little surcharged with 
adjective, like the earlier efforts of the Roman- 
ticists, it is amazingly eloquent. At last the 
" agent " takes a platform — il prend la parole — 
and imposes silence with Speaker-like authority 
in a voice louder than anybody else's. His is 
at once a summing-up, a verdict, a passing of 
sentence, a Ministerial declaration. The crowd 
passes a vote of confidence in the Government 
by adjourning to the next street corner. For 
the time being, at any rate, a revolution has 
been averted. 

Paris, in many of its districts, is built over 
the catacombs. These vast subterranean 
chambers and galleries produce that peculiar 
cavernous sound which is heard in the Luxem- 
bourg, Montparnasse, Vaugirard, Montrouge, and 
Montsouris quarters when heavy carts pass 
rapidly along the coarsely metalled roads. The 
streets are then like monstrous drums beating 



THE VOICE OF PARIS 199 

funeral marches to the grave over that vast 
common grave of generations of Parisians, with 
its milhons of skeleton dead. That quaint little 
Gothic house at the corner of the recently- 
prolonged Boulevard Raspail, which many an 
American artist must remember from his student 
days, actually has a private staircase leading to 
the catacombs from beneath a hermetically- 
closed stone slab just in front of the doorstep. 
From time to time certain municipal officials 
visit this grim entrance, the existence of which 
is known to only very few people. A former 
occupant of the house, surprised by one of these 
visits, the reason of which was mysterious to 
him, was accustomed to relate that once, in 
the dead of night, while he watched, quaking, 
from the room above, convinced that he was 
witnessing the final scene in some Borgia-like 
political tragedy, a party of men, the chief of 
whom wore half concealed under his coat the 
tricolour scarf of a police commissary, had con- 
veyed a body through this entrance into the 
catacombs below. A few days later he was 
annoyed by a cadaverous smell rising through 
the boards of his dining-room floor. The 
nuisance was almost certainly attributable to 
a dead rat, but, to complete his discomfort, 
every morning at five o'clock an empty school 



200 SENSATIONS OF PARIS 

omnibus, belonging to the College Stanislas, 
passed through the narrow street on its way to 
pick up pupils, rousing the thunderous and 
sepulchral echoes of the catacombs with such 
vibratory effect as to give him alarming pal- 
pitations of the heart. Being a man of imagina- 
tive temperament, he decided to transfer his 
residence to the right bank of the Seine. He 
had also been much troubled by the noise of 
cats. Formerly he had lived on the skirts of 
Montmartre, and it was only when he had 
crossed the Seine to the left bank that he learned 
that Paris is divided, by those who know her 
intimately well, into the dog zone and the cat 
zone. He had entered the cat zone. He had 
penetrated to the very heart or citadel of it, for 
countless cats, evidently without homes, and in 
a wild state, rendered the days nervous and 
electric by their ceaseless squabbles, and the 
nights sleepless by their caterwauling. He had 
tried to entice them into his house, but they 
had been proof against all his persuasions. 
Evidently they were cats that had never tasted 
dairy milk or any Christian food. Pariahs, 
sleeping on house-roofs, under bridges, in the 
Luxembourg Gardens, where they not infre- 
quently coil themselves up in the laps of the 
seated statues, haunting the many private 



THE VOICE OF PARIS 201 

gardens for which the left bank is still noted, 
there is reason to believe that they are the 
wild descendants of the pet cats which were 
turned into the streets during the most san- 
guinary period of the Revolution. It was pre- 
cisely these suburbs, with their ancient family 
mansions and convents, that suffered most from 
the dreadful visitations of the Comite de la 
Surete. Every day during the Terror some 
hapless family of aristocrats was dragged to 
the Revolutionary Tribunal, and, after a mock 
trial lasting a few moments, conveyed to the 
Place de la Nation for immediate execution. 

It was here, on the left bank of the Seine, in 
the zone which comprises the Faubourg Saint- 
Honore, the site of the Abbaye des Bois (just 
pulled down), the stately palaces of the Rue de 
Sevres, the Rue de Vaugirard, the Rue Cassette, 
the Rue de Tournon, that Fouquier-Tinville, 
the tigrish public accuser of the Commune de 
Paris, selected his most distinguished and noble 
victims. Each devastated house contained, as 
a rule, a cat, which henceforward became an 
outcast and a wanderer, the servants having 
in many cases shared the fate of their masters 
and mistresses. If the domestic pet happened 
to be a dog, it was most probably destroyed, or 
it found a new master, but the cat is less adapt- 



202 SENSATIONS OF PARIS 

able to changed conditions. Like a Corsican 
bandit, but with the vendetta against all 
humanity in its heart, it took to the maquis, 
or " bush," as it were, afforded by the richly 
wooded parks and gardens, which at that period, 
and until some half-century ago, made the left 
bank of Paris famous throughout the world. 

No doubt these cats subsisted chiefly on the 
rats which swarm in these parts, and it was to 
keep down this pest that they had been primarily 
employed. To-day the rats are still very 
numerous. Their presence in this neighbour- 
hood is another cause of attraction to all the 
homeless cats of Paris, which, when they are 
not on a rat-hunt, fraternize or fight with the 
pet cats belonging to the numerous old maids, 
the quiet professors, the retired tradespeople, 
senators, literary men, and composers, who form 
the mainstay of its human population. At mid- 
night the Boulevard Saint-Germain, the Boule- 
vard Montparnasse, the Boulevard Saint-Michel, 
are alive with rats, gambolling round the trees 
which line the side-walks — rats of the big 
brown species, which years ago exterminated 
the old indigenous grey rat of Paris, fearless 
and familiar almost to the point of being tame. 
" What is that shrill squeaking which I hear 
around me ?" asks the inexperienced visitor of 




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IS^^^^^Bp 










■■ 






Hi 


^^^^^Hj 




- 



THE VOICE OF PARIS 203 

his Parisian friend as he sits in the summer on 
one of these boulevards sipping the nocturnal 
bock. " That, monsieur, is a rat which a cat 
has just caught. Look! don't you see the rats 
— dozens of them — popping in and out of the 
iron cages, shaped hke crinohnes, which protect 
the trunks of the trees ?" 

The vocal drawbacks of the cat and dog zones 
of Paris are serious, but they are relieved by 
more harmonious animal noises. In spite of 
the modernization of the left bank of the Seine, 
which has left little of the old verdure and wealth 
of ancient trees, the nightingale may still be 
heard on summer nights in the garden of the 
convent of Cistercian nuns in the Rue Notre 
Dame des Champs. The blackbird, the thrush, 
and the starling, make melodious the leafy glades 
and avenues of the Tuileries Gardens, and of 
the public parks at Buttes Chaumont, Monceau, 
and Montsouris. In all open spaces of Paris fat 
pigeons coo. They, and the sparrows, whose 
constant chorus of twittering is so loud some- 
times as to be seriously interruptive of brain- 
work, are tame enough to take food from the 
hand, and flourish in such numbers that in the 
Luxembourg Gardens the flower-beds have to 
be protected from their depredations and wallow- 
ing propensities by thin copper netting. 



204 SENSATIONS OF PARIS 

Police regulations have been framed to protect 
the Parisian population from certain classes of 
noises, but they are not always heeded. Barrel- 
organs have been suppressed. The hideous 
barking of draught dogs, which is such a nuisance 
in Berlin and Brussels, is unknown in the French 
capital, where dogs may not be employed to 
pull carts. On the other hand, the police have 
found it impossible to prevent the cracking 
of whips. Though forbidden by a law, whip- 
cracking enters so instinctively into the character 
of the French driver, whether he be cabman or 
drayman, that, unless a definite complaint be 
lodged, there is no official interference. Hu- 
manitarians, moreover, contend that whip- 
cracking is in some measure a protection for 
the Parisian horse. It is a relief to the French 
driver's feelings, it is dramatic and eloquent, and, 
while serving to rouse a lethargic animal, does 
not cause him physical pain. This is a point 
that deserves to be brought home to the 
numerous kind-hearted English and Americans, 
principally ladies, who, when in Paris, demon- 
strate so vigorously against what they call the 
brutal whipping of the cab-horses. 

The ringing of the church bells in Paris is 
permissible only with the consent of the Mayors 
in each municipal district, except on Sundays 



THE VOICE OF PARIS 205 

and public holidays. In the Socialist districts 
it is reduced to a minimum. In the wealthier 
quarters one can form some idea of what Paris 
must have been in the middle of the eighteenth 
century, when it was celebrated above all cities 
in Europe, including even Rome, for its bell- 
ringing. This echo, faint as it is, has an in- 
describable charm. 

It is a police regulation which obliges every 
cab with pneumatic tyres — and there are few 
now that are not so provided — to carry a jingling 
bell, which makes the approach of the cab 
distinctly audible on the noiseless asphalt. 
The ringing of bells enters largely into the 
orchestral composition of the Paris noises. 
Bicyclists jingle them, and on the gaily be- 
ribboned harness of the great dray-horses there 
are clusters of the little bells called grelots, 
which keep up a silvery chatter, a tinkling chime, 
adding much to the musical colour of the 
Parisian atmosphere. It is like a continuous 
ripple of laughter in perfect accord with the 
bright gaiety and movement of the streets. 
Then the drivers of the tramways sound a gong, 
or blow a whistle, the note of which varies with 
the different lines ; and the tramway conductors 
have a Httle brass horn which they sound as a 
signal for starting or stopping. There are tram- 



2o6 SENSATIONS OF PARIS 

cars which are provided with hooters, and the 
noise they make must, by law, be easily dis- 
tinguishable from that of the fire-engine hooter. 
The public chair-mender also has a horn. The 
itinerant seller of goat's milk, wearing the 
Basque cap (the beret) , and followed by his docile 
herd of she-goats, plays a diminutive bagpipe 
or else a rustic flute. The marchand de 
plaisir (plaisir is a thin cake made with flour 
and sugar) rattles a wooden clapper. The 
motor-car, which in the open country is allowed 
to blow a siren or a whistle, is restricted in 
Paris to the use of the horn. The rare four-in- 
hands which have survived the motor craze 
sound a horn when driving through the central 
streets of the city, but are forbidden by an old 
imperial restriction to play in the Avenue du 
Bois de Boulogne, and in the Bois itself. 

Clearly, amidst this babel of mechanical sound, 
to which must be added the shriek of the loco- 
motives on the Ceinture Railway and the hollow 
raw hoot of the steam-tugs on the Seine, the 
old street-cries of Paris have but little chance 
of making themselves heard, and this explains 
their increasing tendency to disappear. A few 
however, survive. The hawker of cherries still 
sanctifies the spring afternoons with his " La 
douce cerise ... la douce !" (The sweet cherry 



THE VOICE OF PARIS 207 

. . . the sweet!), on a long-drawn-out wail, 
psalmodic in its melancholy reminder that the 
end of all good things is at hand. A more 
vitalizing because a more peremptory cry is 
that of the mussel-man, with his harsh *' Voila 
la moule ! Elle est bonne. Elle est fraiche. 
Achetez la moule !" (Behold the mussel ! She 
is good. She is fresh. Buy the mussel!). 
In addition to blowing his horn, the chair- 
mender and the itinerant cobbler, for a reason 
which has never been explained, give vent to 
savage roars, lion-like in their ear-splitting 
reverberations, which in the quieter suburbs 
startle the entire street, and people the window- 
casements with terrified housemaids, " Voila 
le cor-r-r-rdonnie-e-e-er-r-r !" as if the last 
trump were being sounded. On a gentler note 
are the cries of "Fresh lavender!" "Good 
asparagus !" " Chand d'habits !" (the old-clothes 
dealer), " Buy my roses !" "II arrive, il arrive, 
le maquereau !" (Just arrived, just arrived, 
mackerel !) ; " Fromage a la creme . . . fro- 
mage !" (Cream cheese . . . cheese !). The 
window-mender is almost as strident as the 
cobbler, while the plumber, whether itinerant 
or not, has a peculiar whistle, which, like the 
college cries of America, is peculiar to his cor- 
poration, making his presence known to any 



2o8 SENSATIONS OF PARIS 

other plumber who may happen to be at work 
in the neighbourhood — a valuable resource for 
thirsty or lonely plumbers. 

The charm of these old cries is that they are 
echoes of a Paris which in nearly every detail, 
whether of architecture or the customs and 
costumes of its inhabitants, has vanished or is 
vanishing. They call up the vision of a city 
without any of the modern noisy traffic, in the 
days when the Champs filysees were covered 
with wild-flowers, and, in the absence of steam, 
electricity, and petrol, the hours moved more 
slowly. Then the sale of sweetmeats to small 
children was accompanied by the chanting of 
a plaintive tune which was as old as the fairies. 
To-day a ten-centime piece is placed in the slot 
of an automatic machine. 

Quite as ancient a corporation as the street 
criers are the street musicians. It is only on 
the great national fete-days that they are 
allowed real freedom, and in the wealthier 
quarters their entrance to the courtyards of the 
houses is forbidden, though it is rare that the 
concierge, with the sentimentality of her class, 
does not allow this order to be infringed. Their 
music is rarely without a local or national note, 
and this, perhaps, is its most marked pecu- 
liarity. The Midi is represented by the classic 



THE VOICE OF PARIS 209 

pan-pipes and the semi-Oriental heart-throb- 
bings of the French tambourine, which, unhke 
the Spanish tambourine, is an elongated drum. 
The Celtic centre of France, the Berri, sends 
us its vielle, or hurdy-gurdy, with the plumed 
bravuras, the amorous trills, and martial dancing 
notes, of its rustic keyboard. The very last of 
the Provencal troubadours, with that inde- 
fatigable baritone voice which, through all ages 
and all weathers, has remained true to the 
romantic ideal, is here with his guitar. Alsatia 
asserts her attachment to the mother-country 
on trombones and clarinets. Savoy is personi- 
fied by a tuneful but betattered infant with a 
marmoset and an accordion. Except on special 
occasions when the street corners are taken 
possession of by the chanteurs de complaintes 
(a survival, peculiar to Paris, of the old political 
and topical ballad-mongers), who reel out in- 
terminable relations of national events or sensa- 
tional crimes, to an ancient argumentative 
recitative which never varies, and is accompanied 
by an excitable fiddle, the vocal music in the 
streets and courtyards of Paris is blood-curdling 
in its mournful appeal to charity. Each singer 
has his day. In a certain house, near the 
Church of St. Vincent de Paul, one used to know 
that it was Tuesday afternoon by the arrival 

14 



210 SENSATIONS OF PARIS 

of the man who had no tongue, and sang an 
awful caricature of the " Marseillaise " through 
a silver tube surgically inserted in his larynx. 
On Wednesday it was the turn of that drunken 
ruffian with the brow-beaten wife, who bawled 
out with sentimental tremolos, " Petits oiseaux, 
n'allez pas sur la plai-ai-ai-ne-e " (a warning 
to the little birds of the cruel traps that are set 
for them in the fields), while between each 
verse he addressed a kick, or some shocking 
oath, to his wretched companion : " Chante, 
done, espece de brute !" (Sing up, you brute !) 
For years it was on Friday afternoon that a 
very old man with long white hair and beard, 
and his foot in a sling, whined out on a note of 
immeasurable melancholy an ancient ditty with 
the refrain : " Buvons, buvons a la sante de nos 
cent ans !" (Let us drink, let us drink to the 
health of our hundredth year !). Then, one 
Friday afternoon, the courtyard knew him no 
more. His quavering voice was never again 
to draw to the windows the little bonnes with 
their wide, sympathetic stare and their willing 
sous. He had drained the last glass. Every 
winter freezes for all time one of these courtyard 
voices. 




H Pi 




CHAPTER XIV 
A GREAT PARIS RESTAURANT 

When the two official blue bills appeared on the 
white walls of the Cafe Anglais, announcing 
that the place was shortly to be sold, it is not 
too much to say that the whole gastronomic world 
of Paris received a severe shock to the stomach. 
What would the boulevard be without the 
Cafe Anglais ? Already the pitiless hand of 
Time had been busy — especially of recent years 
— in effacing many, and indeed most, of its 
typical culinary landmarks. Tortoni's went 
two lustres ago, and with it the famous flight 
of three stone steps leading to its front door, 
up which had walked every illustrious Parisian 
from the Napoleonic days of Talleyrand and 
Wellington to these latter times of Clemenceau 
and Aurelien Scholl — a brilliant procession of 
diplomatists, politicians, conquerors, dandies, 
dreamers, and wits. Tortoni's is a fading 
memory. Then the Maison Doree, just opposite 
the Cafe Anglais, after a patriotic struggle 

2X1 



212 SENSATIONS OF PARIS 

against the democratic wave which is inundating 
the boulevard, heeled over and sank. Bignon's 
had already gone down, and with it the evoca- 
tive name of the Cafe Foy. The Cafe Riche was 
not long in following the tragic example of the 
Maison Doree. Brebant's, where Turgenieff, 
Daudet, Renan, and Prince Jerome Napoleon, 
were wont to foregather, had been better dead, 
for it had dwindled to the level of a beer-saloon. 
The Cafe Julien had struck its flag to a dry- 
goods store. But none of these houses, essen- 
tially boulevardier as they were, could vie with 
the Cafe Anglais in Parisianism. Tortoni's, like 
the Cafe Napolitain, which is still with us, had 
an Italian inspiration which found material 
expression in a speciality of ice-creams. The 
Maison Doree, the one serious rival of the Cafe 
Anglais, was its junior in years, and, though an 
acknowledged temple of French cooking accord- 
ing to the most sacred rites, lacked the serene 
dignity and the exclusive royal and imperial 
custom which give the Cafe Anglais its unique 
tone. And as for the others — well, all the others 
were, to use Verlaine's phrase, litter ature ; that 
is to say, they exhibited objective forms, from 
which pure art, in this case the art of living, on 
the principle of living to eat and drink, was in 
some essential detail lacking. 



A GREAT PARIS RESTAURANT 213 

It was felt that the disappearance of the Cafe 
Anglais would be the end of a world. For it 
is now more than a hundred years since the Cafe 
Anglais was founded. The story of its genesis 
is not without human and dramatic interest. 
Before the French Revolution broke out, the 
space behind the ramparts of the city (now the 
boulevard), lying between what are to-day the 
corners of the Rue de Richelieu, and the Rue 
de Grammont, was occupied by the country 
mansion and park of the Due de Choiseul, the 
Foreign Minister of Louis XV. This was 
pulled down on the Due's death, and in the 
grounds surrounding it the existing streets 
were then built. The boulevards, which had 
been planted with trees some years before, were 
just becoming fashionable as a promenade, and 
so a number of minor restaurants sprang up 
in their vicinity. Among these was the little 
wayside eating-house, or cabaret, at the corner 
of the Rue de Marivaux, which was to become 
world-famous as the Cafe Anglais. 

The name of its original owner has been lost 
in the fog of ages. His establishment was 
modest in appearance, and possessed this in- 
convenience, that its floor was more than a yard 
lower than the level of the boulevard. Even 
now, on entering the Cafe Anglais, a step down- 



214 SENSATIONS OF PARIS 

ward must be taken. Its customers were few • 
but one day a band of gilded youths invaded 
its precincts, and, finding the food good, and 
the wine even better, they consecrated it to 
their use. Chief among them was the very odd 
Monsieur de Sourdeval. As soon as the vogue 
of the little half-rustic cabaret was assured. 
Monsieur de Sourdeval made a point of dining 
there daily, after which he would invariably 
proceed, in any sort of weather, to the Jardin 
des Plantes, to look at the wild beasts, reciting 
Latin verses on the way, and every night he 
listened to the last act — never more than the 
last act — of an opera, placing himself full in 
view of the audience on the steps leading to the 
orchestra. This is all that is known of Monsieur 
de Sourdeval ; still, it sufficed to make him 
immortal, and he was the first of a long line 
of eccentric viveiirs whose extravagancies helped 
to give fame to the Cafe Anglais. But it was 
not until the beginning of the last century, 
after the Peace of Amiens, when the English were 
free again to visit Paris, that the Cafe Anglais 
achieved its present designation. The English 
were then the only people in Europe who had 
money " to burn," and they showed, regardless 
of expense, their appreciation of the excellent 
French cheer which was to be found at the little 



A GREAT PARIS RESTAURANT 215 

boulevard house. They constituted, in fact, its 
mainstay, and thus it took its name from them. 
When war again broke out between the France 
of Napoleon and the England of George IIL, the 
Cafe Anglais, perforce abandoned by its best 
customers, was on the verge of ruin. It was 
saved by one dinner, a feast of such Gargantuan 
proportions and culinary ingenuity that all 
Paris rang with its fame, and then flocked to 
the restaurant where every previous kitchen 
record had been beaten. The menu led off with 
a " potage Camerani," so named after its inven- 
tor, an actor at the Theatre Feydeau. The chief 
ingredient of this phenomenal soup was the 
concentrated essence of forty fat chicken livers, 
and its successful preparation depended on the 
chickens having been killed by electricity, 
according to a method invented by Beyer, the 
organizer of the dinner, an eminent scientist of 
the day, and, clearly, the discoverer of electro- 
cution. 

The fortunes of the Cafe Anglais were now on 
the uphill grade, and it became necessary to 
enlarge the premises. At No. 13 of the Rue de 
Marivaux, which forms an angle with No. 13 of 
the Boulevard des Italiens, there was a gambling 
den known as the '' Grand Treize." This was 
absorbed by the Cafe Anglais, which thus bears 



2i6 SENSATIONS OF PARIS 

the double No. 13 — of the Rue de Marivaux, 
and also of the Boulevard des Italiens — but does 
not seem to have been unlucky on this account. 
I A year after Waterloo, a new proprietor, who 
was from Bordeaux, Monsieur Chevreuil, set 
himself to arrange the cellars on a scale which 
should be worthy of the growing reputation of 
the restaurant. His clarets and foreign wines 
were selected with immense care and skill, but, 
being from Bordeaux, he disliked burgundies, 
and disliked the customers who drank them, 
though willing to minister at extravagant prices 
to the taste that he condemned. The eccen- 
tricities of the habitues and the crankiness of 
its successive proprietors have ever distinguished 
the Cafe Anglais. Its cellars, which extend 
under three neighbouring houses, are kept as 
neatly as a lady's boudoir. The intersecting 
passages have a little railway running along them, 
and converge to a four-cross road, in the centre 
of which is an artificial orange-tree with luminous 
oranges. The cellar walls are decorated with 
festoons of grape-vines hiding electric lamps. 
Here are wines, in the strictest sense of the 
term, fit for Kings : Chateau Lafite of 1804 (of 
which the magnum is priced 120/-) and of 1805 ; 
Haut Brion of 1880 (120/-) ; Chateau Margaux 
1848 (80/-) ; Clos d'Estournelles, 1834 ; Chateau 



A GREAT PARIS RESTAURANT 217 

Latour, 1871 ; old brandies of 1784, 1797, and 
1809, and green Chartreuse of 1869 and 1877, 
all of which are priceless ; port of 1820 and 1834. 
It was in the heyday of the Second Empire, 
about fifty years ago, that the Cafe Anglais 
reached the zenith of its prosperity. At that 
epoch supper meant more than dinner to the 
smart men and women about Paris. The Cafe 
Anglais was essentially a supper-place, to which 
resorted after the theatre the illustrious dandies 
of the time — the Due de Gramont-Caderousse ; 
the ill-fated young Prince of Orange, heir to the 
throne of Holland, and nicknamed " Citron " ; 
the late King Edward, then Prince of Wales ; 
the Duke of Hamilton, who was finally to break 
his neck on the staircase of the Maison Doree 
opposite, his bosom friend, Lord Seymour, or 
" Milor' Arsouille," as he preferred to call 
himself ; the late Prince de Sagan ; Mr. Bryan, 
an eccentric American member of the Jockey 
Club, whose joyous practice it was to pour a 
bottle of Curasao into the piano, doubtless to 
give it tone. The " Grand 16," the first-floor 
room overlooking the corner of the Rue de 
Marivaux and the boulevard, where the most 
notable suppers were served, no longer has a 
piano ; and this is a sign of the changing times, 
sedate dinners having taken the place of noisy 



2i8 SENSATIONS OF PARIS 

suppers. More than once Napoleon III. came 
incognito to the " Grand i6," where, in the 
Exhibition year, just before the Empire fell, 
was served the famous dinner " of the three 
Emperors," so called because the amphitryon 
was the then Tsar of Russia, and with him were 
the Tsarewitch, afterward Tsar Alexander III., 
and William, King of Prussia, afterward German 
Emperor. The " Grand i6 " is, on account of 
the many imperial and royal personages who 
have dined within its red-damask-hung walls, 
of all the restaurant dining-rooms in the world, 
the one in which the souvenirs of monarchy 
are thickest. Once the " Grand 8 " of the 
defunct Maison Doree ran a close second to it ; 
but the proprietors of the Maison Doree made 
the mistake of purchasing a quantity of wines 
taken from the Tuileries, and sold at public 
auction after the imperial palace had been 
destroyed by the mob, and the sight of these 
famous crus on the wine-card may well have 
proved an eyesore to the illustrious personages 
who, in more peaceful times, had enjoyed the 
fallen Emperor's hospitality. 

The " Grand i6 " of the Cafe Anglais has 
retained its First Empire aspect on the original 
Louis Quinze setting, without a trace of modern 
garishness having been added. Yet, in spite 



A GREAT PARIS RESTAURANT 219 

of its prim and demure outlook, what fantastic 
scenes has it not witnessed in those old supping 
days to which Balzac and the memorialists of 
two generations ago so constantly refer ? It 
was here that Cora Pearl, the Salome of the 
effete Second Empire, was served up in the 
costume of Eve on a silver platter hidden beneath 
a dish-cover, at a supper given by the Due de 
Gramont-Caderousse. It was from the " Grand 
16 ' ' that Rigolbroche, the Polaire of her day, 
set out in similarly light attire on her famous 
trip across the boulevard to the Maison Doree. 
Often enough the supper service was sent 
hurtling through the windows on to the boule- 
vard below, by the frenzied young bloods of the 
period, of whom, perhaps, the maddest was the 
recently deceased General Marquis de Galliffet, 
in whose memory a dinner is now held at the 
Cafe Anglais every first and second Friday of 
the month. Prince Bismarck frequently supped 
there before the Franco-German War. The 
Cafe Anglais has helped to reconcile with the 
vicissitudes of life more than one deposed and 
exiled monarch. The ex-King Milan of Servia 
rarely dined elsewhere, and Queen Isabella of 
Spain, leaving her carriage a few doors farther 
down the boulevard, so as not to be seen, and 
accompanied by her suite, has many a time plied 



220 SENSATIONS OF PARIS 

an assiduous knife and fork in the " Grand i6." 
During the revolution which followed the collapse 
of the French army at Sedan, the Comtesse de 
Castiglione, the most beautiful woman of her 
time, not excepting the Empress Eugenie, who 
thought she had reasons to be jealous of her, 
was hidden in an apartment over the Cafe 
Anglais by the head-waiter. This saved her 
from the sanguinary fury of the Communist mob, 
who attributed the national disasters in part 
to her supposed influence over Louis Napoleon. 
The figure of the head-waiter Ernest, to whom 
the Comtesse de Castiglione was indebted for 
this chivalrous rescue, lingers in the memories 
of old-timers as the model of what a maztre 
d'hotel should be — clean-shaven, soft of speech, 
with the manners, but not the morals, of a 
diplomatist, for he should never say the thing 
that is not, a sincere but not obtrusive coun- 
sellor, a living and loving encyclopaedia of gas- 
tronomic lore. Ernest's present successor, 
Alphonse, worthily maintains the traditions 
of these weighty functions. For the maztre 
d'hotel is the ambassador of the chef. At the 
Cale Anglais there has been an unbroken line 
of great cooks, of whom each in turn has in- 
herited the mantle of the illustrious Careme. 
What Berlioz and Wagner were to music, and 



A GREAT PARIS RESTAURANT 221 

Chateaubriand to the written word, Careme 
was to cooking, the first of the great Romantics. 
After being cook to Napoleon I., Careme 
entered the service of George IV. ; but his artistic 
spirit, cramped within the stony confines of 
Windsor Castle, quickly sought release from 
insular surroundings, and his description, in 
the preface of his monumental work on cooking, 
of the why and the how of his resignation 
from the service of the British Sovereign is a 
page of blazing eloquence, instinct with patriotic 
and artistic ardour, which, if the "First Gentle- 
man in Europe " ever read it, must have made 
him feel cheap indeed. Careme found refuge in 
Paris, with Baron de Rothschild, and there 
formed his most famous pupil, the great Duglere. 
Quitting Baron de Rothschild, Duglere became 
chef at the Cafe Anglais, where he invented the 
potage Germiny, dedicated to the eminent 
financier, Comte de Germiny, the barbue (brill) 
a la Duglere, the pommes Anna, the poulet a 
la d'Albufera, dishes now celebrated through- 
out the world. A pupil of Duglere is the 
present chef and proprietor of the Cafe Anglais, 
whose name I would willingly have written 
down here, had he not, with the modesty so 
becoming to the true artist, particularly begged 
me not to do so. " The name of the Cafe 



222 SENSATIONS OF PARIS 

Anglais," he said, " is quite glorious enough 
by itself." 

The imperial and royal crowned heads of 
Europe have borne no grudge against the 
artistic descendants of Careme for the master's 
refusal to accompany Napoleon to St. Helena, 
and his rupture with George IV. On the 
contrary, they are among the most assiduous 
and faithful customers of the Cafe Anglais, 
where several of them — notably the Grand-Dukes 
of Russia — have their own dinner services of 
silver plate, bearing their crowned monograms. 
Other noble habitues have simply their private 
finger-bowls and rince-bouche, some of which 
are silver gilt, and one is pure gold. These are 
kept in a large cupboard with glass doors, which 
is called the hihliotheque. The service on the 
first set of shelves in the right-hand division of 
this hihliotheque was that used for the late 
King of England when, being on a brief visit 
to the French capital with Queen Alexandra, 
he dined at the Cafe Anglais for the last, 
time. The old King was giving Queen Alex- 
andra the treat of " doing " Paris with him as 
if they were a newly-married couple on their 
honeymoon. Grave politicians were convinced 
that the King's presence was motived by some 
deep political scheme. But it was nothing of 



A GREAT PARIS RESTAURANT 223 

the sort. The King, accompanied by his Queen, 

was visiting the scenes associated with his 

joyous youth and manhood, when, as Prince 

of Wales, he was the most popular of Parisians, 

and there they sat in the " Grand 16," with 

just a few intimate friends, almost like Darby 

and Joan — she, no doubt, with indulgent love 

in her thoughts, and he with the mist of fading 

memories in his eyes. This was the menu : 

Potage chiffonade. 
Truite de riviere frite, sauce madere. 
Poularde braisee au gros sel. 
Ragout de truffes. 
Baron de Pauillac roti, pommes de terre nouvelles. 
Puree d'epinards nouveaux. 
Salade, pommes, chicoree. 
Asperges, sauce hollandaise. 
Poires a la Bourdaloue. 
Desserts. 



Chablis mou tonne. 

Moet 1893 frappe. 

Chateau Latour 1875. 

Grande tine champagne 1800. 

A dinner in every way suitable to British 
Sovereigns, simple and substantial. 

One of the most treasured souvenirs in the 
possession of Monsieur Burdel (there goes the 
name!), the present owner of the Cafe Anglais, 
is the autograph letter which Queen Alexandra 
wrote to him in reply to his respectful letter of 
condolence on King Edward's death. 



224 SENSATIONS OF PARIS 

In three to four years from now the Cafe 
Anglais, so well known to all the wealthy 
Americans living in or passing through Paris, 
will be driven from its ancient abode to make 
room for a Belgian bank. Will it be closed 
for ever, or merely transferred to another and, 
if possible, equally congenial locality ? That is 
the secret of Monsieur Burdel. 



CHAPTER XV 
THE WILD-FLOWERS OF PARIS 

There is a wild-flower in the heart of every 
Parisian, and to this is traceable his passionate 
love of wild-flowers, which is one of the nuances, 
or shades, of his character ; for the everyday 
life of Paris is constantly oscillating between the 
extremes of tragedy and, comedy, and, of all 
flowers, it is the wild-flower that has emotional 
temperament and wide dramatic possibilities. 
Never, for instance, was there such a skirt- 
dance in the world as that which the ordinary 
poppy of the fields dances every minute of its 
life with the wanton breezes. Since the reign 
of Louis Treize the Parisian has been frondeur, 
or a potential rebel, refractory to any established 
form of government ; and the wild-flower, too, 
lives its own brief life independently, pre- 
occupied with a question of form rather than 
ambitious to outdo, either as to colour or 
perfume, the artificially cultivated and richer 
garden plants. The wild-flower is a Bohemian 

225 15 



226 SENSATIONS OF PARIS 

and a democrat, and so appeals to the Parisian's 
sense of liberty and fraternity. Moreover, the 
Parisian, like the wild-flower, loves the " out 
of doors" ; and highly complex, if you analyze 
him, as is also the wild-flower, he is in an equal 
degree a true child of Nature. 

In England, and more particularly in London, 
the folk are greatly fond of flowers ; but their 
preference goes to the old-fashioned mixed 
border and pot plants, such as stocks and 
pansies, geraniums and calceolarias, which they 
cultivate in their narrow gardens or window- 
boxes, and feed and pamper up with affectionate 
solicitude and pride until each plant becomes 
as un wieldly and fleshy as an old-maid's pet 
poodle. Size and brilliance of colour are what 
the Londoners aim at, taking John Bull, no 
doubt, as their model. These smug and well- 
groomed flowers, which have all won prizes for 
good conduct, have the virtues, but also the 
limitations, of the English middle-class. Their 
floral hearts, no doubt, are in the right place, 
to judge from the good-tempered vigour with 
which they bloom, and the strong conscientious 
perfumes that they give forth. They are law- 
abiding but passionless. They brighten up, 
with a note not so much of increased gaiety as 
of heightened respectability, the buttonhole of 



THE WILD-FLOWERS OF PARIS 227 

Charles and the bodice of Mary Ann when those 
two honest but unromantic lovers sally forth 
from the counting - house and the kitchen to 
keep the most innocent of company on solemn 
Sunday afternoons. They are not of the kind 
that Ophelia would have woven into her tragic 
wreath. These simple garden flowers enter into 
the Londoner's scheme of home, enhancing the 
beauty of home, its comfort, or its cosiness, 
cheering and perfuming the memory of home 
in the after-years. They are the floral offerings 
which he lays upon the domestic altar. Parisian 
sentimentality, however, is less bound up with 
the chez soi, the domestic domain. There is no 
French word for *' home," (foyer does not 
exactly fit it), and many a Frenchman, and a 
typical Frenchman at that, would just as soon 
see onions as roses flourishing in his garden. 
When he talks of the home, he calls it le home, 
using the English word, and credits it with many 
strange oversea characteristics which are largely 
the outcome of his imagination. It is not 
unusual for French savants to make a special 
voyage to London solely to study the English 
institution of the " home." When the French- 
man speaks of la belle France, he means a 
country flowing with milk and honey, with 
every available acre of it under wheat. The 



228 SENSATIONS OF PARIS 

almost universal ambition of the Parisian 
belonging to the middle-class of small shop- 
keeper, inferior Government employe, and 
railway official, is to retire to some little cottage 
in the country, there to shed his Parisianism like 
a slough, and in blouse and sabots, muddy, 
unshaven, and unshorn, to become a peasant 
as were most likely, his fathers before him. 
Thus he returns to the land, reverts to the 
original stock. Wild-flowers remind him in 
Paris of the country life for which he yearns. 
They have this special message for him, which 
is not quite so intelligible to the Londoner, who 
is more purely city-bred. Hence a reason, 
among others, why the Parisian is so fond of 
wild-flowers. In no other capital in the world 
are there so many wild-fiowers sold in the streets 
as in Paris, and this humble trade begins in 
January, and lasts practically all the year round. 
It used to be said that what distinguished a 
London-bred child more than anything was that 
he had never seen a cowslip growing. Such a 
definition could not be applied to a Parisian 
child, for cowslips grow wild in the grass-plots 
of the Tuileries and Luxembourg Gardens. 
Cowslips and oxlips are among the first spring 
flowers which the hawkers, with their picturesque 
wicker hods, the shape of which has not changed 



THE WILD-FLOWERS OF PARIS 229 

since the seventeenth century, sell in the streets 
of Paris. But the first great wild-flower harvest 
is that of the daffodils. If the winter has not 
been too prolonged or severe, from about the 
twentieth of March until the end of the first week 
in April, Paris is encircled by a great natural 
chaplet of daffodils. The wide forests of Senart 
and Chantilly, which spread to the north-east 
and south-west of Paris respectively, each being 
about six miles in extent, are carpeted with 
millions and millions of daffodils as with a cloth 
of gold. Unlike the artificially cultivated daffo- 
dils which reach England, though not France, 
in such enormous numbers from Scilly, the wild 
Parisian daffodil has a most deUcate scent, which 
suggests the very breath of spring in all its 
freshness and purity. It is impossible to con- 
ceive anything more ethereally beautiful than 
these vast nodding plains of gold under the still 
leafless trees — of gold lambent and cool, hke 
that of late afternoon sunhght upon a green 
lawn. The flower itself is of the simplest and 
purest type, the central crown being of a deeper 
yellow than the petals at its base, which are 
nun-like in their virginal pallor. These are the 
true Lenten lilies in their cassocks of dark 
green, unsoiled by the sacrilegious hybridizer, 
who is proud when he has made one of their 



230 SENSATIONS OF PARIS 

luckless sisters turn her chalice into a cabbage, 
or has sprinkled her golden crown with an 
indelible stain of blood, and called her by a new 
and foolish name. These are the holy flowers 
which inspired old Herrick to say to them : 
" When we have pray'd together, we will go 
with you along." Of just this scene Words- 
worth wrote : 

" I wandered lonely as a cloud 
That floats on high o'er vales and hills, 
When all at once I saw a crowd, 
A host of golden daffodils, 
Beside the lake, beneath the trees, 
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze. 

:ic 4: * * 4: 

Ten thousand saw I at a glance, 
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance. 
Hf * * * * 

A poet could not but be gay 
In such a jocund company." 

They will bring into the streets and humble 
dwelling-places of Paris their atmosphere of 
spotless feminine grace, of youthful melancholy 
and pure tenderness. No Parisian can see for 
the first time this golden paradise of daffodils, 
which is just twelve miles from his city gates, 
without breaking into raptures of enthusiasm ; 
and then the wild longing for possession comes 
over him, and he will spend a delirious hour in 
picking an enormous bunch of the flowers, 
and wallow in an ocean of gold. 



THE WILD-FLOWERS OF PARIS 231 

If about mid-Lent you mount the steep street 
which leads through the httle village of Epinay- 
sous-Senart, on all sides you will see daffodils 
withering and crushed on the path, which wanton 
children have plucked and thrown away. And 
you can find your way easily to the daffodil 
regions simply by following this track. Every 
cottage on the outskirts of the forest has huge 
bunches of daffodils in its windows. You will 
see boys and girls carrying long poles on their 
shoulders, upon which hang bundles of daffodils 
in rows. They are on their way to the Paris 
market. In the forest itself you will find 
peasants with barrows and carts heaped high 
with hundreds of bunches of daffodils, which 
have the same destination. Many pickers trudge 
twice from Senart to Paris in the day with their 
loads of daffodils on their backs ; others spend 
the whole night in the forest, braving the early 
spring frosts, so as to be the first in the field. 
The Paris market can absorb only a small pro- 
portion of the incalculable quantity of daffodils 
which flower every year in this ancient forest 
of Senart. (It was there that Louis Quinze first 
set eyes on the beautiful maiden, from the 
neighbouring village of Etiolles, who was after- 
wards to change her plebeian name of Poisson 
for that of Marquise de Pompadour.) In Paris 



232 SENSATIONS OF PARIS 

a fairly large bunch of these wild-daffodils is 
sold for seventy-five centimes, or sixpence, so 
that the value of the annual crop must run into 
many thousands of francs. 

In a few days this vast carpet of gold will 
change from dazzling yellow to a deep blue. 
The bluebells, or wild-hyacinths — les clochettes, 
as the Parisian calls them — have taken the 
place of the daffodils. All the woods round 
Paris are blue with them, and they have managed 
to survive in the wild state even in the less 
frequented thicknesses of the Bois de Boulogne. 
There are few parts of France where the blue- 
bell grows in greater abundance than close to 
the capital, so that it might well be considered 
the Parisian wild - flower above all others. 
Children are fond of making wreaths of it, to 
which it lends itself easily, with its long flexible 
stalk. The vista of a woodland glade drowned 
in the blue shimmer of these flowers in myriads, 
from beneath one's feet to the vanishing-point 
of the perspective, is a sight not to be forgotten, 
and is common around Paris in the months of 
April and May ; while in the cit}^ itself the long 
lines of barrows heaped with the wild blue 
hyacinths, and the hawkers' hods and baskets 
full of them, paint the streets with a ribbon of 
deep dreamy blue, especially in the neighbour- 



THE WILD-FLOWERS OF PARIS 233 

hood of the railway-stations, in the open spaces 
round the churches, and at the entrances to the 
local markets, where the sellers of wild-flowers 
chiefly take their stand. The very air is faint 
with their powerful and exquisite perfume. 
But the bluebells are not the favourite wild- 
flowers of the ordinary Parisian. The palm of 
popularity must be given to the lily of the 
valley — the muguet des hois. 

What the forget-me-not is to the German 
Gretchen, the muguet des bois (the wild lily of the 
valley) is to the Paris gvisette, and thus it has 
been for untold generations. The first of May is 
known as the Fete du Muguet, and on that 
day, not only is it traditional for children to 
make presents of bunches of wild lilies of the 
valley to their elder brothers and sisters — the 
flower seems to be dedicated to youth — but 
in the streets surrounding the opera-house, 
where all the big dressmakers are, you will 
see at luncheon-hour troops of the young girl 
apprentices wearing bunches of muguet in their 
simple bodices. The muguet brings luck, and 
it appeals more than any other flower to the 
humble little Parisienne's sense of poetry, this 
delicate spike with its double row of little milk- 
white bells, its broad tapering leaf, and its 
peculiarly evocative scent. No doubt she feels 



234 SENSATIONS OF PARIS 

that in a sense it reflects herself. Is not her life 
just such another ringing of the changes on 
a chime of little silver bells, whose flash and 
tinkle last for the brief space of a spring season ? 
She has the same native wildness, and simple 
unconscious elegance. To start forth on a 
bright Sunday morning for one of the woods 
near Paris, and pick muguet, is her ideal of a 
holiday excursion. 

" En cherchant du muguet, 
Du muguet dans la clairiere ; 
En cherchant du muguet, 
Du muguet d-a-ans 1-a-a f-6-r-e-t !" 

she sings, and on her way back she pets her lilies 
of the valley as if they were human beings : 
" Oh, the beautiful muguet, how sweetly it 
smells !" Elaborate are her plans for disposing 
of it. One large bouquet will remain in her 
room for at least a week, reminding her every 
moment of the delightful day she has spent. 
A few sprays will be given to the concierge, 
or janitor, whose good graces are to be culti- 
vated ; while the remainder will go to grand, 
maman, who will not fail to be tearfully re- 
minded thereby of her own sylvan excursions 
in search of muguet in those far-off days when 
there were hardly any railways, and it was half 
a day's journey to the woods at Meudon. 



THE WILD-FLOWERS OF PARIS 235 

According to the herbalists, the petals of the 
lily of the valley contain a toxic substance, which, 
like digitalis, has a directly stimulating effect 
upon the heart. Perhaps this may account, 
by some subtle process of sentimental telep- 
athy or suggestion, for the charm which the 
muguet so potently exercises over the heart of 
those essentially Parisian little beings, all made 
up of nerves, gaiety, and emotions, the midi- 
nette of the dress-making atelier, and the 
grisette of the Latin Quarter. The street-cry, 
" Fleurissez-vous, mesdames : voila le muguet !" 
(Beflower yourselves, ladies : behold the lily 
of the valley !), followed by, " Du muguet ! 
Achetez du muguet ! Du bon muguet par- 
fume !" (Lilies of the valley ! Buy the lilies 
of the valley ! Fine scented lilies of the 
valley !), is one of the oldest in Paris. The 
muguet harvest is as much a godsend to the 
pariahs of the Paris pavement as is the hop- 
picking in Kent to the submerged tenth of the 
London East End. The May morning has 
hardly dawned before a procession of ragged, 
footsore tramps comes streaming into the city 
from the neighbouring woods, loaded with 
muguet. On May Day waggon-loads of muguet 
arrive by train. The flowers are picked when 
they are still in the earliest bud, for the little 



236 SENSATIONS OF PARIS 

Parisian lady likes to see them open out under 
her own eyes, and so have the illusion that their 
lives are linked with hers. In some of the great 
forests round Paris it is forbidden to pick the 
muguet on pain of a fine ; for the pheasants are 
laying at this season, and to steal the eggs on 
the pretence of looking for lilies of the valley 
is a common trick with the villagers. 

The primrose, so common in the woods round 
London, is rare in the immediate vicinity of 
Paris, and to find it in anything like such pro- 
fusion as in England one must go into Normandy. 
The vast and ancient forests in the Department 
of the Eure, at Bizy, Louviers, and Dreux, are 
covered with primroses ; and though the pale 
yellow variety is by far the most common, the 
purple and white, particularly the white, are 
by no means rare. White and purple oxlips, 
which do not, to my knowledge, grow near 
London, are common in the woods of St. Cloud, 
which is only a stone's-throw from the Paris 
fortifications. The allied cowslip, which the 
French call coucou, is the most widely dis- 
tributed of all the spring wildings in the cop- 
pices and meadows of the Parisian district. 
The village lads and lasses make wreaths and 
balls and Easter eggs of its delicately yellow- 
tinted and exquisitely-scented flowers ; a delicious 



THE WILD-FLOWERS OF PARIS 237 

sweetmeat is also obtained by dipping its petals 
into molten sugar. Enormous quantities of 
these cowslips, or coiicous, are sold in the Paris 
streets. Sweet-smelling violets, both blue and 
white, grow in profusion round Paris, and even 
in certain favoured spots within the city area, as 
at Auteuil, in the deep sward of the steeple- 
chase course, and in the old abandoned ceme- 
tery in the Bois. But the violets sold in the 
Paris streets are not all wild ; it is only in the 
spring that they are culled from the surrounding 
country. An article of faith with the Parisian 
is that la vraie violette de Paris (the true Pari- 
sian violet) has a far finer perfume than that 
which comes from the South of France. 

Pink and white wood - anemones are con- 
temporaneous with the first oxlips, and as spring 
merges into summer the hawkers' baskets will 
be filled with celandines (chelidoines) and king- 
cups (soucis d'eau), from the neighbouring 
streams and marshes. Flaming bundles of 
yellow broom and large bunches of yellow 
buttercups make their appearance, with 
branches of red and white hawthorn, of wild 
apple and pear blossom, and of the wild though 
not native lilac, of which huge bunches may be 
gathered in the woods of Vaucresson, twelve 
miles to the west of Paris. The stone walls of 



238 SENSATIONS OF PARIS 

the medieval ruins, so numerous in the depart- 
ments of the Seine, the Seine-et-Oise, and the 
Seine-et-Marne, are topped and tufted at this 
season with the wild wallflower, whinflower, 
giroflee, or ravenelle, according as you give it 
the English, the Scotch, or the two French 
names, armfuls of which the holiday excur- 
sionist will carry home with him. The robinia, 
or false acacia, is now in bloom on the highways 
and in the woods, spreading on the ground a 
mantle of its white petals, as of snow. The 
yellow laburnum, called pluie d'or (golden rain), 
lights up the coppices and hillsides. The 
fields are full of the white and yellow mar- 
guerite, or anthemis ; ditches and rivulets are 
blue with forget-me-nots. Red poppies, and 
blue and purple and blue-grey corn - flowers 
mingle with the as yet unripe wheat. A few 
weeks later the large ponds at St. Cloud, Ville 
d'Avray, Meudon, and Boulogne-sur-Seine, will 
be glowing with water-lilies. Foxglove reaches 
Paris from the Norman dunes, wild-lavender 
from the South. The banks of the Seine, the 
Marne, and the Oise, supply the yellow-flag lily 
(the original fleur-de-lis of France), and later on 
the bulrush. The marshlands yield up their 
feathery and tufted reeds and tall grasses. 
The flowering willow is a familiar sight in the 



THE WILD-FLOWERS OF PARIS 239 

Paris streets at the period of Les Rameaux 
(Palm Sunday), when branches of consecrated 
box are also sold outside all the churches. When 
summer is over, the hawkers fall back upon 
heather, which they sometimes dye blue, upon 
chardons, or wool-carder's teasels ; ferns ; and at 
last, when Christmas approaches, upon holly 
and mistletoe. The French forests teem with 
mistletoe, so much so that tons of it are ex- 
ported to England, and farmers are required 
by law to remove this maleficent parasite from 
their orchards under pain of a fine. But 
barely has the last hawker, with great bunches 
of mistletoe suspended from either end of a 
pole, vanished from the streets, than the first 
baskets of snowdrops make their appearance. 



CHAPTER XVI 

VANISHING PARIS— 1910 

Old Paris is vanishing apace. Not a month, 
not a week, not a day, passes but some new 
demohtion is undertaken of buildings, and whole 
blocks of buildings, whose early history is lost 
in the mist of time. Just now the house- 
breakers are busy upon an ancient mansion in 
the Boulevard d' Italic which for tragic dilapi- 
dation and solitary sorrowfulness has always 
seemed to me to have no rival in any capital 
of Europe. Untenanted bourgeoisement — that 
is to say, for residential purposes — for more 
than half a century, it stands, or rather totters 
— for at the moment of writing it is being 
battered to the ground — in the centre of a vast 
garden, the coarse grass and bushes of which 
grow thick about it like the unkempt beard 
upon a vagabond's chin. Only the pen of Poe 
could do justice to the atmosphere of concen- 
trated sadness and despair which surrounds this 
Paris edition of " The House of Usher." Like 

240 



VANISHING PARIS— 1910 241 

the pensive nun who " forgot herself to marble," 
it seems to have brooded itself into a kind of 
ethereal disembodiment ; for at a certain dis- 
tance, notably from the aerial track of the 
Metropolitan Railway, whence it can be seen, 
it suggests a large blue-green cloud which has 
momentarily settled on this wasted plot of 
ground, and has shaped itself into vague archi- 
tectural forms ; then, on coming nearer, it looks 
as if its walls might be built of century-old cob- 
webs, petrified in dust and dirt. A hard blow 
with a stick would, one would think, suffice to 
knock the whole fantastic edifice, which has 
both the cinder-like hue and apparent incon- 
sistency of calcined paper, into thin air. The 
slatted shutters, always closed, the stone colon- 
nades, the Doric pillars which frame the en- 
trance-door, the tiled roof, the classical mould- 
ings on the pediments, the great porte-cochere 
which, gaunt and hungry, in the rags of the 
multicoloured posters clinging to it, has the air 
of a desperate and sturdy beggar to whom it 
would be dangerous, after nightfall, to refuse an 
alms, are all of the same dark, dank, mouldy 
green-black, veiled in the blueish haze which 
rises from the neighbouring Bievre, once a 
sparkling river, now a reeking drain. Upon 
the cadaverous background of the time-stained 

16 



242 SENSATIONS OF PARIS 

walls the broken, sightless windows show a faint 
vitreous gleam. 

Here, indeed, is a haunted house — haunted 
by mysterious memories, if not by materialized 
spirits. So complete is the picture of its grief, 
with such histrionic perfection does it wear its 
weeds of woe, that one barely needs or wants 
to know its real story, as if no facts could outdo 
the suggestiveness of the unspoken tragedy. 
But the facts are gruesome enough, for it was 
here, in the grounds of this old mansion, that 
the " Goatherdess of Ivry " was murdered some 
eighty years ago. Aimee Millot, known as the 
" Bergere d'lvry " (Ivry is a suburb hard by), 
was a virtuous girl, of singular prettiness, who 
tended her mistress's goats in the Champ de 
I'Alouette, or " Lark's Field," also called — and 
this was a more ancient designation — the Clos 
Payen, in the centre of which stands the old 
house. The Champ de I'Alouette was then, as 
Alfred Delvau tells us — and he speaks with 
authority, for his boyhood was spent close by — 
" so full of sun, of verdure, of scent, and of 
gaiety." The Bievre had not yet been con- 
verted into a sewer, and the gloomy streets and 
alleys which surround it now were — in part, at 
least — tree-shaded roads and country lanes. In 
the sentimental imagination of the Parisians of 




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VANISHING PARIS— 1910 243 

those days (it was the period of Louis PhiHppe), 
the picturesque figure of the " Goatherdess of 
Ivry " struck the last genuine note of Watteau- 
esque rusticity within the city's hmits. She 
must have been to them in a measure what the 
" Lass of Richmond Hill " was to the Londoners 
of three generations ago. All Paris went wild 
over her murder. A half-witted waiter, named 
Ulbach, was tried, condemned, and executed for 
the crime. He stabbed her, he said, " during a 
clap of thunder," because she had repelled his 
advances. But his confession is now believed 
by some to have been the mere babbling of a 
lunatic, which conveniently covered a much 
more scandalous story. Already at that time 
the old house was a lonely and sinister place, 
used for clandestine rendezvous, and the 
wretched girl had, it is believed, been enticed 
or dragged there by a band of ruffians under 
the direction of a personage of high and even 
princely rank, enamoured of her Watteauesque 
charms, but whose head, when his guilt was 
discovered, was considered by the police 
authorities of that time to be too august for 
the guillotine. Such, at any rate, is the legend 
still current in the neighbourhood, and at least 
it is worthy of Ingoldsby. 

Here, then, is a suggestion of the mystery of 



244 SENSATIONS OF PARIS 

these old stones, a secret which has been their 
ban and their spell, and they are carrying it to 
the grave. Not a soul has slept in the house 
since the murder was committed. Auguste 
Rodin, the sculptor, has used the premises as a 
studio, but that was years ago. He did not 
live there. Now that the place is being pulled 
down he has purchased from the demolisseur, 
the amiable and erudite M. Ragu, to whom I 
am indebted for some of the foregoing details, 
the wood-carvings and mantelpiece from its 
dining-room, and they will henceforth help to 
adorn M. Rodin's palatial studio at Meudon, so 
that the memory of one of the weirdest among 
the many strange houses of Paris will not be 
entirely lost. A literary interest also attaches 
to this blue ruin. It was originally built in 1762 
by Peyre Aine, the Royal architect, as a country 
house for M. Le Pretre de Neufbourg, one of 
Louis XV.'s " Intendants des Finances." This 
commercially-minded nobleman (there is nothing 
new under the sun) established all around it a 
huge hlanchisserie, or laundry, for the washing 
and " getting-up " of new linen for the retail 
market. Later on the laundry was taken over 
by the Paris hospitals, and when it had ceased 
to serve their purpose its dilapidated and aban- 
doned premises — long, one-storeyed outhouses — 



VANISHING PARIS— 1910 245 

were converted into tenements for the very poor. 
Victor Hugo, wandering on the banks of the 
Bievre in search of local colour for Les Miser- 
ahles, saw them, and appreciated their uniquely 
picturesque squalor. They became the masure 
Gorbeau which he has etched with so Rem- 
brandtesque a needle, where lived the philan- 
thropic felon Valjean, Marius, the Quixotic 
student, and Gavroche, the gamin de Paris — 
surely the truest and most human of all Victor 
Hugo's creations. The masure Gorbeau disap- 
peared some years ago. 

The old house has also an historic interest. 
It was here that Corvisart lived — Corvisart, 
surgeon to Napoleon the Great, who gives his 
name to the Rue Corvisart, which is close by, a 
brilliant adventurer of science, who had never 
passed an examination with credit, but was, 
none the less, one of the pioneers of modern 
surgery, the diplomatist and wit, who could 
presume with safety to reply, when Napoleon 
inquired of him at the New Year's levee, " And 
how many people do you expect to kill this year, 
cher maitre ?" "That was the very question 
which I was about to ask of Your Majesty." 

Destruction threatens another ancient dwell- 
ing in Paris — No. 24, Rue Tournefort — the in- 
terest attaching to which is, however, purely 



246 SENSATIONS OF PARIS 

literary — et comment! as the French say. In- 
deed, if all the writers of fiction who owe their 
art to Balzac had been grateful enough to make 
pilgrimages to it the house would long ago have 
become a literary Mecca. For the governing 
principles upon which have been based the 
methods of the Realistic, the Naturalistic, and 
the Impressionist schools of novel-writing are 
indisputably derived from the Comedie Hu- 
maine, and never in that immortal series of 
tales were they more triumphantly proclaimed 
and vindicated than in the amazing picture 
which Balzac has painted in Le Pere Goriot 
of the Pension Vauquer. In that descrip- 
tion the genius of Balzac gave the full measure 
of its capacity for exteriorizing the souls of 
material things in their relations with the 
human souls around them. When he wrote 
the undying phrase which sums up the pension, 
and Madame Vauquer, its proprietress, ** Enfin 
toute sa personne explique la pension, comme 
la pension implique sa personne," (her whole 
person explained the boarding-house, just as the 
boarding-house implied her person), he was 
putting in a nutshell what was then, to all in- 
tents and purposes, a new theory of Art, the 
practice of which was destined to bring about a 
literary revolution, to sweep away the old 



VANISHING PARIS— 1910 247 

romance of sentiment and convention in favour 
of the modern novel of observation and analysis. 
At the same time he was propounding, as against 
the purely materialistic doctrines which after- 
wards led astray some of his professed disciples, 
notably Zola, the truth, nowadays more and 
more widely recognized by psychologists and 
biologists, of the spiritual unity of matter. 
Then, with a burst of that ironic eloquence in 
description which makes him, whatever the 
purists may say, a stylist of the very first rank, 
he continues : " The sallow plumpness of the 
little woman is the product of this life, as typhus 
is the consequence of the exhalations of a hos- 
pital. Her knitted woollen petticoat, which 
from underneath displays her upper skirt, made 
of an old gown, of which the cotton-wool 
stuffing escapes through the rents in the split 
material, sums up the salon, the dining-room, 
the httle garden, introduces the kitchen, and 
foreshadows the boarders. When she is there 
the spectacle is complete. Aged about fifty 
years, Madame Vauquer resembles all women 
who have had misfortunes." "All is true" adds 
Balzac in English, for he must have felt (and he 
was right) that only the language of Shakespeare, 
to whose sublimest heights of tragedy he was 
about to climb, suited the splendour of this boast. 



248 SENSATIONS OF PARIS 

The spectacle, alas ! is no longer complete, 
precisely for the reason that Madame Vauquer 
is necessarily absent from it, except in the 
spirit, to which Balzac gave firstly flesh and 
then immortality. In the natural order of 
things Madame Vauquer would long ago have 
been laid in her grave. Still, all is true in the 
main details, allowing for the superficial changes 
due to the lapse of time — the action of Le 
Pere Goriot opens in 1819 — all is true, save 
for the beings, imaginary, but of so intense a 
life, with whom Balzac peopled this house. It 
is no longer a pension. Its fortunes, already 
ebbing, when under the direction of Madame 
Vauquer its respectability was so zealously 
assured, have greatly declined during the inter- 
vening ninety years. Originally the suburban 
mansion of M. Boyleve de Chambellan, in 
1777 — those were the days of its splendour — it 
had reached in its pension phase an advanced 
stage of the shabby-genteel, and now it is a 
workman's tenement. Naturally the odeur de 
pension, which Balzac described, has fled, and 
given place to even more nauseous smells. But 
the walls are still " daubed with that yellow 
colour which gives an ignoble character " (Bal- 
zac was speaking of the Paris of Louis XVIII.) 
" to almost all the houses of Paris." Gone is 



VANISHING PARIS— 1910 249 

the great mantle of ivy upon the wall of the 
neighbouring house overlooking the garden, 
from which the fruit-trees and all but one vine 
have disappeared, their places being now taken 
by roses and flowering shrubs. But the alley 
of lime-trees, which Madame Vauquer, though 
nee de Conflans, insisted on calling tieuilles, in 
spite of the grammatical observations of her 
boarders, and where the escaped convict, Vau- 
trin, walked with Eugene de Rastignac, and 
held that memorable conversation with him, is 
still there. A black cat scrambles about in it, 
which may well be a direct descendant of 
" Mistigris." And you may still see at the 
back of the house, to the left of the little 
garden, the shed for storing wood, with the 
rabbit-hutches and hen-coops. It was in one 
of the four rooms on the third floor, whose 
windows overlook the garden, that '* le Pere 
Goriot " died. The concierge of the house 
maintains — quite mistakenly, I think — that 
Balzac lived and worked in the two miserable 
little rooms of which one is lighted by the 
gable window seen in the photograph, " while 
as for * Monsieur Goriot,' he lived," she says, 
" in the house next door." There is no evidence 
that Balzac ever inhabited No. 24, Rue Tourne- 
fort, known to him as the Rue Neuve-Sainte- 



250 SENSATIONS OF PARIS 

Genevieve, though it is possible that he may 
have done so. In any case the room with the 
gabled window has no place in Balzac's descrip- 
tion of the Maison Vauquer. Soon this vener- 
able landmark must disappear, for it is too 
much to hope that an enlightened Minister of 
Public Instruction will cause it to be included 
among French " Monuments Historiques," and 
so save it from destruction. Already a large 
painted notice has been affixed to its outer wall, 
announcing that it is for sale, ** either in whole 
or in lots," and surely before many months are 
over it will have disappeared down the hungr}^ 
maw of M. Ragu, or some equally enterprising 
demolisseur. 

To be covered with modern constructions is 
also the fate that awaits at Auteuil, that ex- 
treme western suburb of Paris, the garden, 
*' 4,863 metres square," which surrounds a little 
shrine-like edifice of eighteenth-century style, 
visible from the contiguous street, the Rue de 
Remusat, on whose fronton, in large deep letters 
of gold, still blazes this proud inscription : " Ici 
ftit la maison de Moliere." Whether or not this 
is the exact spot where Moliere's house stood 
cannot now be demonstrated. The monument, 
though repaired in 1858, was erected at the 
beginning of the last century, at a time when 



VANISHING PARIS— 1910 251 

the memory of Moliere was still comparatively 
fresh, so that the tradition is very probably 
true. In any case, the garden must have been 
the one wherein he walked, and meditated, and 
took his ease, in company very often of Racine, 
who had the opposite house to the left, where 
Les Plaideurs was written, of Boileau, who 
dwelt a stone's throw to the right, and of le bon 
La Fontaine, and it was across this garden to 
the river's edge that the three friends — Boileau, 
La Fontaine, and La Chapelle — ran on that 
memorable evening when, after a too-copious 
dinner, their heads inflamed with wine, they 
conceived the mad idea of flinging themselves 
into the Seine, and were only restrained from 
carrying out this suicidal project by Moliere' s 
witty manoeuvring. In that village of ruined 
and expiring gardens — Auteuil — none has a 
more woebegone and melancholy aspect, and 
its funereal tones are intensified by the curtain 
of black-green cedar-trees which closes it in at 
the back. A mantle of tragic souvenir hangs 
over it. It was here, or rather in the mansion 
which formerly stood in its midst — pulled down 
some months ago — that the Princesse de Carig- 
nan, whose elder little boy was presumptive heir 
to the throne of Sardinia, was accidentally 
burnt to death (February 11, 1829). It had 



252 SENSATIONS OF PARIS 

been lent to her by the descendants of the 
Duchesse de Choiseul-Prashn, whose own heart 
lies buried in the garden beside the body of a 
dearly-loved son. This Duchesse de Choiseul- 
Praslin was the grandmother of that Due de 
Choiseul-Praslin, illustrious in the annals of 
crime, who in 1847 murdered his wife, the 
daughter of Marshal Sebastiani, in their town 
house in the Faubourg St. Honore, and com- 
mitted suicide in prison, or, according to another 
widely-believed story, escaped with the con- 
nivance of the Government to England, where 
he died many years afterwards. Thus Moliere's 
garden is now a cemetery, though in ever so 
limited a sense of the word, for it contains the 
two ducal graves, of which, however, no trace 
is now to be found, and a cenotaph to the 
memory of Moliere. Broken pots and pans, 
waste paper, discarded birch-brooms, a few still- 
budding rose-trees, masses of rubble, lie half- 
buried in the tangle of withered yellow weeds 
and sodden grass with which in this winter 
season its surface is covered. A ragged path 
leads across it to the Moliere monument. The 
last tenants of the demolished house were 
Dominican sisters, gentle, charitable folk, whom 
foolish persecution has put to flight. Soon a 
great block of middle-class fiats will rise in this 



VANISHING PARIS— 1910 253 

empty space. The cedars, centuries old, will be 
hewn down, and all traces of Moliere's erstwhile 
presence will have disappeared. 

Apropos of cemeteries, what foreigner, what 
Parisian even, has ever heard of, let alone 
visited, that old, old cemetery which nestles 
behind crumbling grey walls and tall sentinel 
trees in the very heart of the Bois de Boulogne ? 
How few people there are who know of its 
existence ! Yet there it is, and there it must 
remain, until its last concession perpetuelle, the 
duration of which is limited to one hundred 
years, has expired, and that will not be for 
another ten years. Then the skeletons will be 
removed, and the old cemetery will be absorbed 
into the Bois. I know fewer more picturesque 
or tranquil spots. In the summer it is a wilder- 
ness of luxuriantly growing shrubs and flower- 
ing plants, with lush grass rising knee-high, 
masking the broken and abandoned tombs when 
they are not entirely covered with thick-set 
brambles. In the spring the ground is sprinkled 
all over with myriads of sweet-smelling violets, 
both purple and white, and, later on, purple and 
white lilac, and roses of every imaginable hue 
and of forms run wild, perfume and embower 
it. This ancient cemetery, which originally 
formed part of the famous and, in the end, in- 



254 SENSATIONS OF PARIS 

famous Abbey of Longchamp (destroyed during 
the Revolution), has been closed for nearly 
twenty years. Till then the public was allowed 
free ingress to it, but this permission had to be 
withdrawn, owing to the indecorous conduct of 
a painter who had chosen the old cemetery as a 
suitable place in which to paint the nude en 
plein air. Students of de Goncourt will re- 
member that it was here, one hot Sunday after- 
noon in summer, that the " Fille Eliza " mur- 
dered her soldier-lover as he lay dozing on one 
of the tombstones. Mile. Guimard, the famous 
courtesan and dancer of the time of Louis 
Quinze, is actually buried here, and her tomb- 
stone, though it bears no inscription, has been 
identified to the satisfaction of at least one local 
antiquary. " La Guimard," who in the days 
of her splendour, when she numbered among 
her lovers the Prince de Soubise and a profligate 
Bishop, owned the house in the Rue d'Antin, 
which was indifferently known as the Temple 
of Dance and the Temple of Venus, died, ex- 
tremely old, in 1818. The grave declared to be 
hers is up against the old cemetery wall, which 
is separated from the rest of the Bois by a 
grilled moat. On this wall, at its further ex- 
tremity, sporting roughs are wont to climb to 
watch the races at Longchamps, for the ceme- 



VANISHING PARIS— 1910 255 

tery wall faces the Longchamp race-course, 
which is only a few yards off. In their excite- 
ment their hats not infrequently fall into the 
moat, and are then unrecoverable, and this zone 
of old hats, each more shapeless and shabby 
than the other, which encircles the old ceme- 
tery, but is only visible when the moat is ap- 
proached, is not the least strange and fantastic 
feature of the abandoned, death-haunted en- 
closure. 

Now let us go eastward, along the Seine, to 
the corner of the Rue du Figuier, and the Quai 
des Celestins. There in front of the magnifi- 
cent, feudal, and still frowning Hotel de Sens 
— once the residence of the Archbishops of Sens, 
to whom the Bishops of Paris were mere suf- 
fragans, and afterwards of Queen Margot, the 
enigmatical first wife of Henri Quatre — is a 
bunch of houses so ancient that no one can say 
exactly when they were built, but they are as 
medieval as anything to be seen in Paris. To 
the angle which their waUs form with the Rue 
Fauconnier clings a broken Gothic niche which 
once contained the statue of a saint. Originally 
they must have been dependencies of the great 
Royal Hotel or Palace of St. Paul, built by 
Charles V., which extended from this spot to 
where formerly stood the Bastille. According 



256 SENSATIONS OF PARIS 

to a tradition, which is sufficiently creditable, 
it was here that lived and died Rabelais. The 
rambling construction, extending all along the 
edge of the gardens of the Hotel St. Paul — 
gardens whose existence is recalled by the very 
names of the Rue du Figuier, and of the Rue 
des Jardins St. Paul, and the Rue Beautreillis 
just behind it — has now been divided up into 
squalid lodging-houses, the tenants of which are 
principally foreign Jews. It forms, in fact, the 
south-western boundary of the Ghetto of Paris. 
The late M. Charles Nodier, librarian of the 
neighbouring Arsenal, a learned archaeologist 
and charming writer, was convinced that it 
was in this end bit of the Rue du Figuier — he 
specially singled out No. 8, but 8, 6, 4, and 2, 
all originally formed one building — that Rabe- 
lais passed his last years, and Charles Nodier, 
good Pantagruelist that he was, never passed 
the spot without raising his hat. A few days 
ago the crooked, bulging, venerable walls of 
this most ancient demise, which are daubed a 
dark red — a favourite colour in the Paris Ghetto 
— bore on them a notice printed upon paper of 
a slightly lighter red, announcing that the 
entire property, comprising the angle of the 
Rue du Figuier and the Rue Fauconnier, was 
to be sold at public auction, the upset price 



VANISHING PARIS— 1910 257 

being 130,000 francs. This announcement has 
since disappeared, the proprietor having ar- 
ranged matters otherwise, but the existence of 
the old fourteenth-century building, which was 
almost certainly Rabelais' last home, is none 
the less doomed, for the Government has de- 
cided to expropriate the site at no distant date. 
The expulsion of the religious orders is re- 
sponsible for the vanishing of many a pic- 
turesque feature of Old Paris. Thus the Abbaye 
des Bois, which some months ago existed at the 
back of the " Bon Marche," and was famous 
from the fact that in the last century Madame 
Recamier, the most beautiful woman of her 
generation, held a literary salon there, the chief 
lions of which were Chateaubriand, Benjamin 
Constant, Ampere, and Lamartine, is now being 
covered with modern houses, the white-coiffed 
nuns who formerly owned it having been driven 
away. A few yards farther south, in the Rue 
de Sevres, a vast yawning gap shows where, a 
little while ago, stood the Convent of the Hos- 
pitalieres de St. Thomas, the only nunnery 
which remained open during the Terror, where 
was an extremely old black statue of the Virgin, 
which had been an object of veneration to no 
less a personage than St. Francis de Sales. One 
used to enter by a faded green door, always 

17 



258 SENSATIONS OF PARIS 

ajar, on which was a seventeenth - century 
knocker of primitive, quaintly-charming shape, 
worn bright by the fingers of seekers after con- 
solation for life's woes as the toe of St. Peter's 
statue at Rome by the kisses of the faithful, 
while above it was a little grated '' judas," or 
spy-hole. The simple-hearted, charitable souls 
behind that door, who, inspired by the never- 
faltering spirituality of their black doll's smile, 
lived solely to do good, whom even the Revolu- 
tion in its most epileptic phases had respected, 
have, nevertheless, been counted as a serious 
danger to the State, for which reason they have 
been obliged to flee to foreign lands, and their 
house has been razed to the ground. The same 
fate has befallen all the other monastic buildings 
in Paris, with very few exceptions, and if I 
mention one other — the Convent of the Dames 
de St. Michel (the " Ladies of Silence ") — it is 
because their departure has left at the disposal 
of the builder of modern constructions one of 
the largest open spaces not a public park, which 
is still to be found in the heart of Paris. The 
vast gardens of this convent extended from the 
Rue d'Ulm to the Rue St. Jacques, in the Pan- 
theon quarter, and covered over an acre of 
ground. The only vestige now remaining of its 
former inhabitants, if exception be made of the 



VANISHING PARIS— 1910 259 

hundreds of brown rats which play about in its 
shattered foundations, is a big pented shrine, 
hanging in ruins on the east wall, in the centre 
of which is the shadow — the ghost, as it were — 
of a cross, marking the place from which a huge 
crucifix has been torn. It was here that Ste. 
Jeanne de Chantal founded the Order of the 
Visitandines — nuns whose self-imposed mission 
was, as their name implies, to visit and succour 
the poor. Ste. Jeanne had a very illustrious 
granddaughter — Madame de Sevigne, the 
greatest letter-writer that ever lived — the 
woman who, indeed, created the art of letter- 
writing, which ever since her time has remained 
essentially a woman's art. And here she fre- 
quently came to seek solitude and to write her 
letters. It was in this convent that her super- 
cilious daughter, Madame de Grignan, was 
educated. In the gorgeous mansion which 
Madame de Sevigne occupied at the corner of 
the Rue des Francs Bourgeois, which is now 
the Musee Carnavalet, she had neither the 
leisure nor the tranquil atmosphere that she 
needed for the composition of that exquisitely 
spontaneous, wittily descriptive correspondence 
which has immortalized her as one of the best 
and subtlest artificers of modern French. So 
she came here. Men have long ago adopted 



26o SENSATIONS OF PARIS 

the custom of placing marble tablets to com- 
memorate the haunts of male genius. It is true 
that Madame de Sevigne has her tablet at the 
Carnavalet Museum, but surely the women 
should insist upon an inscription being placed 
near this spot in honour of that rnost brilliant 
of all women letter- writers. A large portion of 
the ancient gardens of the convent has already 
been utilized for the construction of the new 
" Institut Oceanographique de Paris." The 
philanthropic Prince of Monaco, who has done 
so much for Monte Carlo in particular and for 
humanity at large, is arranging to substitute 
an aquarium for those old-fashioned flower-beds 
where formerly walked the " Ladies of Silence." 
The new building, which is in the most approved 
Monaco style, and looks like a provincial Casino — ■ 
neo-Semitic is the right architectural designation 
— will soon be filled with all kinds of queer Medi- 
terranean fish. Autres mceurs, autres guitar es! 

In the face of so much destruction, it is satis- 
factory to note that there is no truth in the 
report recently published in a Paris paper that 
the country-house, with its lovely surrounding 
park, at Aulnay, in the suburbs of Paris, where 
Chateaubriand wrote the first part of his 
" Memoires d' Outre Tombe," is to be sold for 
building purposes. Its present proprietor, the 



VANISHING PARIS— 1910 261 

Due de la Rochefoucauld, has no such intention, 
either for the present or the future. De visu, I 
have ascertained that the little old pseudo- 
Gothic villa, the genesis of which Chateaubriand 
has so amusingly described, is still intact, as is 
also the porch designed by him, of which he 
was so proud, with its two columns of black 
(now whity-blue) marble and two female carya- 
tides of white marble, for, as he tells us, he 
" remembered that he had passed through 
Athens." The trees which he took such delight 
in planting with his own hands still flourish in 
the park, notably a magnificent pine which was 
sent to him from Canada, whose branches now 
form a superb nave, like that of a cathedral, 
before sweeping the lawn beneath. The little 
pavilion in which he wrote so many immortal 
pages is also intact. Englishmen and Americans 
owe so great a debt of gratitude to the prose poet, 
who by the best and most conscientious transla- 
tion ever made by one great master of another's 
work, first made audible to French ears the sub- 
lime sonorities of Milton, and had previously 
demonstrated to an enraptured world the natural 
beauties of America, that it may be a satisfaction 
to them to know that the sylvan retreat, where 
were spent the few happy years of his tempestuous 
and sorrow-stricken life, is not to be desecrated. 



CHAPTER XII 

A FRENCH SOLDIER'S MOTHER 

Emile Duvernoy, a posthumous child, born 
six months after his father's death, is the only 
son of his mother, and all his youth has been 
spent alone with her in a tiny sixth-floor flat at 
Montmartre. His earliest recollection is of a 
yellow photograph surrounded by forget-me- 
nots, rudely snipped out of coloured paper, 
hanging in a black wooden frame on the wall 
of their one living-room. It represents a stern, 
hollow-cheeked man in a sergeant's uniform of 
loose, old-fashioned cut ; in the hard, intense 
eyes a flame which has outlived the fading of 
all the rest of the picture ; big pointed black 
moustaches ; on the left breast eight medals 
and a cross. And, when Emile is old enough to 
understand, he learns from his mother that one 
of the medals is the " Medaille Militaire," 
awarded for fifteen years' faithful service in the 
army. And the cross is that of the Legion of 
Honour. " Yes," Emile' s mother says, as she 

262 



A FRENCH SOLDIER'S MOTHER 263 

kisses him fondly on his Uttle red cheeks, " thy 
papa " — for the phot(jgraph is that of Emile's 
father — '* was a knight of the Legion of Honour, 
and thou must promise me to become one, too, 
is it not, my httle man ?" And the Uttle man 
promises with wondering eyes. 

The late Sergeant Duvernoy was the model 
French non-commissioned officer — twelve cam- 
paigns, eight wounds ; saved the life of his Cap- 
tain in one of the hottest engagements of the 
Tonkin Expedition, thus winning the Cross. 
Attached to the "Bats d'Afs " (Bataillons 
d'Afrique, 1'*= Section, Compagnies de Disci- 
pline), and thoroughly detested for his severity 
by the men under him (poor wretches ! slaves in 
soldier's uniform), he never during the whole 
course of his life felt any remorse for the acts of 
cruelty which his devotion to duty made him 
commit ; and when in retirement at Montmartre 
during the five years which preceded Emile's 
posthumous birth, his favourite theme of con- 
versation, though he was not much of a talker, 
was the system of rigorous punishments em- 
ployed in the " Bats d'Afs " for the mainten- 
ance of discipline. Thus his open-mouthed and 
not altogether admiring audience came to know 
about the crapandine, which is a way of tying a 
refractory soldier by neck, wrist, and heels, so 



264 SENSATIONS OF PARIS 

that he is forced to he helpless on his stomach 
until released, which may not be for two or 
three days at a time. " There lies my ' cheru- 
bin ' " (cherub), the Sergeant used to say, '* in 
the blazing sun, just out of reach of his water- 
can, and if by a superhuman effort he rolls him- 
self up to it, and tries to lap from it like a dog, 
nine times out of ten over it goes ! Oh, la, la, 
la ! No more water till next day ! And forty 
degrees in the shade !" They learned, too, that 
a silo is a deep hole in the sand, where the un- 
disciplined soldier is buried alive for many hours, 
with only just a little aperture through which 
the light and air can reach him. They were in- 
formed that in the ateliers of the " Travaux 
Publiques," a section of the " Bats d'Afs," in 
which the soldiers are really convicts, the daily 
task of digging that each man has to accomplish, 
working in the sun from 6 a.m. to 9.30 a.m., 
and from 2 p.m. to 5.30 p.m., is a trench, 8 metres 
in length, iio metres in breadth, and 80 centi- 
metres in depth — just three times what the local 
contractors expect from the average nigger 
coolie. But the scene, the depicting of which 
gave Sergeant Duvernoy the keenest relish, was 
the pursuit of a deserter — the three sharp sum- 
monses to surrender, *' then, ping-pang, and my 
cherubin to spring into the air, beat his arms 



A FRENCH SOLDIER'S MOTHER 265 

together, and fall dead on his face. And serve 
him right ! A deserter betrays both honour and 
fatherland, and does not deserve to live — a dog, 
an assassin, an — ugh — eh — what ? Yes, gentle- 
men, there you have what we call the * Bats 
d'Afs,' or * Biribi ' — a hell upon earth, if you 
like, but the right place for an undisciplined 
soldier. Suppress * Biribi,' and you may as 
well suppress the army, and where will France 
be then ?" A poser which left his hearers 
dreaming a little sullenly. As the Sergeant 
always referred to his former subordinates as 
" cherubins," this was the ironical nickname his 
Montmartre neighbours gave him — " le Pere 
Cherubin " (Father Cherub). Little Emile, 
having been told by his mother that a " cheru- 
bin " is an angel, thinks that to call his father 
the **Pere Cherubin" merely means that he 
has gone to heaven, and is secretly alarmed at 
the prospect of one day meeting him there, for 
in the photograph he looks so grim. 

After the great Dreyfus affaire, a change came 
over the Sergeant. He became thinner, more 
and more hard-eyed, and spent every fine day 
sitting alone in the little square at the foot of 
Montmartre staring stupidly in front of him, 
smoking an interminable pipe. When asked 
what was the matter, he growled out that it 



266 SENSATIONS OF PARIS 

was his first wound that was giving him trouble. 
The doctor, called in at the last moment, diag- 
nosed consumption. This did not deceive his 
wife. She alone knew that her husband had a 
heart — not the common workaday heart that is 
turned out by the gross — but a heart of his own, 
and not a bad heart, either — and it was broken. 
What he thought about the affaire no one ever 
knew — to have expressed an opinion when so 
many officers of high rank were at variance 
would have seemed to him an act of indiscipline 
— but the squalid horror of it all literally killed 
him. Just before the end came, he took in his 
wasted hand the Cross of the Legion of Honour 
which his wife had laid upon his pillow, close to 
his cheek, and, looking into her eyes with the 
hard stare which his illness had rendered more 
glaring than ever, he said : " Cherished one, if 
it be a son, I count upon thee that he never 
forget these words : * Honneur, Patrie.' " And 
he pointed to the motto encircling in gold letters 
the centre of the cross. She kept the tears 
from her eyes by an effort which left her dumb, 
kissed him, and he died. 

Jeanne Duvernoy, though twenty years 
younger than her husband, loved him with 
devotion. Not altogether blind to some of his 
failings, still, she understood him, and knew at 



A FRENCH SOLDIER'S MOTHER 267 

least that she herself had nothing to fear from 
the primitively savage nature whose attach- 
ment to her was that of a wild beast to its mate. 
She has been his feminine counterpart, with this 
difference — that her ideals are poetized. Her 
patriotism is no less intense than was his, but 
it is of the lyrical order. Often she says she 
wishes she had been born a man, so that she 
might have been a soldier. It is likely enough 
that she would not have been deterred by the 
hardships of a soldier's life, for hard work from 
early morning till late at night is what Jeanne 
revels in. Her little flat is a model of orderli- 
ness ; her furniture and floors as highly polished 
as ever a soldier's buttons. A small, blue-eyed 
woman is Jeanne, with raven black hair reaching, 
when she lets it down, almost to her feet, and 
bright and active as a bird. It is not uncommon 
to find Frenchwomen in whom there is a strain 
of pure heroism — heroism of the romantic order 
— and she is one of these. Daughters of the 
Revolution, granddaughters of Joan of Arc, 
great-granddaughters of Eve, whatever may be 
their rank in life, they are charming as girls, 
faithful as wives, and incomparable as mothers. 
It is in poverty, sickness, and danger — indeed, 
in all the complex difficulties of life — that their 
best qualities come out. ** Messieurs les mal- 



268 SENSATIONS OF PARIS 

heurs, tirez les premiers," they seem to say, 
almost like the French Guard at Fontenoy. In 
the presence of a catastrophe their tempers 
remain high and brave ; when they succumb, 
then, indeed, is the end of all things. And 
debrouillardes (managing and resourceful) that 
they are, too. 

\ Debrouillarde Jeanne needs to be, for the ex- 
penses of the Sergeant's funeral sweep away 
most of his little savings— just £28. It is quite 
a ceremonious affair — a detachment of infantry 
commanded by a Lieutenant (this is due to his 
rank as a Knight of the Legion of Honour) fol- 
lows in the procession, together with a delega- 
tion of the Veterans' Society, to which Duvernoy 
belonged, with banner, band, and bluster. The 
banner bears the words embroidered in gold, 
" Honneur, Patrie." In spite of her condition, 
the widow follows as chief mourner, and General 
X (the Sergeant's former Captain, whose life he 
saved), in civilian clothes, supports her respect- 
fully on his arm as the coffin is lowered into the 
grave. 

Then comes the dreary fortnight at the 
Maternite Hospital, with the misery of its 
prison-like walls and gratuitous nursing, through 
which Jeanne Duvernoy retains, if not cheerful- 
ness, at least uncomplaining resignation. As 



A FRENCH SOLDIER'S MOTHER 269 

soon as she can get about, she trips round to the 
shops in the neighbourhood where she is accus- 
tomed to deal, and tells the shopkeepers' wives 
that she wants work as a.femme de menage. 

The femme de menage is an institution in 
many respects peculiar to France. To trans- 
late the term into English as " charwoman " 
would be an insult to a good femme de menage, 
and not disparaging enough for a bad one. A 
first-class housekeeper, an excellent cook, to 
whom the purchase of the provisions may be 
entrusted with all security, an admirable needle- 
woman — such is the best type of femme de 
menage, and she will do the work of a staff of 
servants for a charge of only 40 centimes (just 
under 4d.) per hour. 

Jeanne's reputation is high in the " quarter," 
for she has always paid what she owed. Soon 
all her morning is disposed of. Before going to 
her work she takes little Emile to the Municipal 
Creche, paying 5 centimes for him to be fed and 
cared for till she fetches him in the afternoon. 
Easily she can find enough menages to occupy 
all her time, but she prefers to do embroidery 
at home, so that the presence of little Emile 
may brighten at least a portion of her day. 

Jeanne's special talent is the embroidering of 
initials upon fine linen, and she is paid 25 cen- 



270 SENSATIONS OF PARIS 

times for each letter — a poor remuneration, con- 
sidering how fine and elaborate is her workman- 
ship. To earn 2 francs at this eye-straining task, 
she must toil far into the night ; but she sings 
a gay lullaby to little Emile over her needle : 

" Et maintenant sur mes genoux 
Brave genera], endormez-vous !" . . . 

— and to tend him and love him is an unfailing 
source of courage and happiness. Her hus- 
band's pension, after fifteen years' loyal service, 
and the award of the Medaille Militaire, was 
1,100 francs per annum, or £44. His Cross of 
the Legion of Honour brought him in £10 a year, 
which ceased, however, at his death. Of the 
original pension, the widow receives just one- 
third, or £14. odd. Thanks to the influence of 
General X, she has been accorded a barrow- 
hawker's medal. To understand the meaning 
of this, the reader must know that in Paris the 
costermongers {mavchands de quatre saisons), 
male and female, are a privileged corporation, 
or, to put it more accurately, they may not 
exercise their calling without a special licence 
from the Prefect of Police. Those to whom the 
licence has been granted — and for this they pay 
5 francs (4s.) a year — are obliged to wear a brass 
medal, bearing the name and address of the 
holder, which is worn suspended round the neck 



A FRENCH SOLDIER'S MOTHER 271 

by a chain. Jeanne farms out her medal for 
15 francs a month, in breach, it must be added, 
of the city regulations, but the police are good 
enough to wink at it, for her deputy is an old 
lady of unimpeachable virtue, who never ob- 
structs the traffic, and always moves on when 
she is told to. Thus, on a monthly income of 
120 francs, or 24s. a week, Jeanne, by prodigies 
of hard work and economy, manages to make 
two ends meet, and to maintain the same dig- 
nified appearance as in her late husband's life- 
time, and this in Paris, where the cost of living 
is, even at Montmartre, at least one-third higher 
than in London. Her constant, if not her 
greatest, preoccupation is the rent. For two 
rooms and a very diminutive kitchen on the 
sixth floor of the Rue Baudelique she pays 
120 francs {£4 i6s.) a year. 

In Paris rents under 500 francs are payable 
quarterly on the eighth day of the month before 
noon. On that day Jeanne must hand over 
30 francs to the concierge, or house-porter, to 
be remitted to the landlord. It was the Ser- 
geant's invariable habit to pay in gold — one 
20-franc piece, and one lo-franc piece — this 
being more dignified than a pile of silver change, 
and Jeanne maintains the tradition. Never in 
the whole course of her housekeeping life has 



272 SENSATIONS OF PARIS 

she been a day or an hour late with the quarter's 
rent, paid in advance, and in gold. 

The rent ! How reverent is the attitude of 
the majority of Parisians towards the rent ! 
Other accounts may be allowed to stand over, 
but a garment of peculiar sanctity drapes the 
rent. It is a certificate of respectability to be 
exact with the rent. In the worst criminal 
cases, such as wife-murder or parricide, if it can 
be proved in favour of the guilty party that he 
always paid his rent with punctuality, this is 
an extenuating circumstance, which never fails 
of its effect upon the jury, and may even secure 
his acquittal. The rent is constantly in Jeanne's 
thoughts. The sight of the big louis and the 
small louis gleaming golden, on the eve of rent- 
day, in the ragged old leather purse which had 
been her husband's, is a perfect joy to Jeanne, 
and her pleasure and pride are hardly less great 
when the concierge, on handing her the stamped 
receipt for the 30 francs, exclaims, as he never 
fails to do : " Ah, with Madame Duvernoy there 
is nothing to fear. Just like your poor hus- 
band — never behind by a minute. Ah, madame, 
if all the world were like you !" Regularly, on 
the eve of every eighth day of the quarter 
month, Jeanne jingles the two gold pieces before 
the delighted eyes of little Emile, eager to seize 



A FRENCH SOLDIER'S MOTHER 273 

them, and vexed that they should be the only 
bright things in his mother's possession, envied 
for playthings, which she will not let him have. 
" No," she says, " they are very beautiful, but 
they are not for little Emile. ' On n'y touche 
pas ! ' (Paws off !) Us the rent /" 

Laboriously but peacefully the years glide 
by. Jeanne is happy, sitting with her em- 
broidery on fine summer afternoons in the little 
Montmartre Square, gay with flowers, while 
three-year-old Emile plays beside her with the 
other small children of the quarter. She is 
happy when, a couple of years later, he parades 
Montmartre at Carnival time, to the admiration 
of all beholders, in a miniature soldier's uni- 
form, all of which she has made for him herself, 
except the tin sword. She is happy when, a 
strong rosy boy of fourteen, he joins the Mont- 
martre Gymnastic Society, and at the head of 
his company, in a graceful costume of white 
calico trimmed with blue, he rouses the echoes 
of the old Montmartre Butte with a bugle. 
\ Emile has a nice voice, and sings Paul Derou- 
lede's inspiring soldier's song, " Le Clairon " 
(" The Bugler ") with great conviction and 
success : 

" L'air est pur, la route est large, 
Le clairon sonne k la charge." . . . 



274 SENSATIONS OF PARIS 

— and this, too, makes his mother happy, for 
she feels that he is his father's own boy. The 
thought softens her sorrow when she visits — as 
she does every Sunday — the Pantin Cemetery, 
to tend and put flowers upon the Sergeant's 
grave — a task which, throughout all the -inter- 
vening years since her husband's death, she has 
never once missed. 

Yet Jeanne sees clearly that Emile only 
slightly resembles his father. He is a thorough 
Parisian, while both his parents came from the 
provinces — the Sergeant from the lost province 
of Lorraine, and Jeanne from sunny Avignon. 
Emile has the vivacity, the restlessness, the 
hatred of restraint, the spendthrift tastes so 
common in the youthful Parisian of the present 
generation. He talks glibly, especially on 
politics, and has a highly acute, though one- 
sided, sense of injustice. He is self-willed, but 
not always along the line of duty. The Ser- 
geant never admitted himself to be in the 
wrong, but he took some pains to be in the 
right. Like so many Parisian lads, Emile has 
several useless little gifts — draws cleverly, has 
a prodigious memory for popular songs, and 
takes a huge pleasure in anything that resembles, 
ever so distantly, a theatrical entertainment. 
Chariot, Emile' s chosen companion in the 



A FRENCH SOLDIER'S MOTHER 275 

Gymnastic Society, has the same tastes as 
himself, and evenings spent with him at the 
Gaiete Rochechouart, at the Elysee Montmartre, 
and the Cigale, not only drain the widow's re- 
sources of many a 2-franc piece, but involve the 
keeping of late hours and a disinclination to rise 
early in the morning on the part of Emile — 
failings, however, which his mother is certain 
the regiment will correct. For it has always 
been understood between Emile and his mother 
that as soon as he is eighteen years of age he is 
to enlist in the army on a five years' engage- 
ment. 

It is then that Jeanne's dream is to enter 
upon the first stage of its realization. From 
private soldier to corporal, then through the 
successive grades of Sergeant, Sergeant-major, 
and Adjutant, she sees him rise. In democratic 
France this is quite possible. The non-com- 
missioned officers' school at Saumur (Emile will 
choose the cavalry) comes next, and a couple of 
years afterwards he will don the officer's uni- 
form. " Tu me reviendras un gentil petit 
officier " (Thou shalt come back to me a nice 
young officer), she whispers to him between 
mother's kisses. *' Captain, Major, Knight of 
the Legion of Honour, Colonel, General, per- 
haps ! Who knows what brilliant career fate 



276 SENSATIONS OF PARIS 

may not reserve for her darling Emile, who, 
with all the military fervour which his late 
father possessed, has had the excellent modern 
education supplied by the Paris Municipal 
Schools, writes such a good hand, and con- 
verses with so much apropos on so many 
topics ?" 

When the great day comes, Emile, taller and 
nearly twice as heavy as the late Sergeant, is 
drafted into a regiment of Cuirassiers. 

How his mother's heart beats with pride 
when first she clasps him in her arms in his big 
blue trooper's coat and red breeches ! How 
warlike he looks in the gleaming steel helmet 
with its great brass crest, from the back of 
which hangs the black criniere, or " horse-tail," 
destined to turn a sabre-cut dealt at the neck 
or the shoulders ! The criniere is not really 
made of horse-hair, but oi fanons de baleine, or 
shredded whale-bone. That is a detail which 
will be new to many people, but what Jeanne, 
although a soldier's widow, did not know before 
is that in the French Cuirassier and Dragoon 
regiments the chic or " swagger thing " for 
troopers who can afford it is to wear a criniere 
made of woman's tresses. It is really a very 
pretty idea. There is something in the notion 
which is very chivalrous and very French. But 



A FRENCH SOLDIER'S MOTHER 277 

the cheapest criniere de femme costs 200 francs 
(£8), and that, too, at second-hand. The very 
fine glossy and quite black hair which adorns 
some of the officers' helmets is of Chinese origin, 
and may cost as much as 1,500 francs (£60). 
As Jeanne listens to these details related by 
Emile, there flashes across her brain an idea 
which is at once maternally and patriotically 
sublime. Her own raven-black hair, in which 
there is barely one thread of silver, so glossy 
and bountiful that it is the pride of the quarter 
— ' ' les beaux cheveux de Madame Duvernoy ' ' 
is a phrase often on the lips of the concierge, 
and the baker's wife at the corner of the street 
— shall be offered up (as it were) on the altar 
of Emile' s military glory to make a criniere for 
his helmet. And in this divine sacrifice, at the 
thought of which she at no moment feels one 
pang of regret or the smallest revulsion of female 
vanity, she achieves some part at least of the 
unattainable ambition of her girlhood — to be, 
not only a soldier's wife and a soldier's mother, 
but something of a soldier, too. Something of 
her, of herself, will accompany Emile throughout 
his soldiering. Her hair will float around his 
head when he charges with his squadron ; her 
hair will caress his cheek in the hour of battle, 
if ever there shall be war ; her hair will turn the 



278 SENSATIONS OF PARIS 

blows which the enemy may aim at his neck 
and back ; her hair may save a French 
soldier's life, and her son's as well. Vive la 
France ! 

'■ When Emile receives from the vaguemestre of 
his regiment the registered postal package which 
contains his mother's hair, he knows well enough 
what is inside the box, for he has guessed his 
mother's intention from certain vague expres- 
sions in her letters, though she, fearing that he 
might protest against her sweet sacrifice, and 
wishing her gift to come as a surprise, believes 
that she has kept him completely in the dark. 
His comrades crowd round him. " Ah, the 
lucky youth ! Ah, the gay boy ! Ah, the pig 
— the fat, the immeasurably fat pig ! It is his 
sweetheart who has sent him her head of hair ! 
Ha, ha, ha ! He must pay us a bottle of wine !" 
And they pat him on the back and dig him in 
the ribs as he fixes the splendid black tresses in 
his helmet. "It is his sweetheart !" they yell 
in chorus. "Sacred pig! Sacred Emile ! Thy 
sweetheart, eh ? Is it not — is it not ? Useless 
to deny it, you rufhan !" Emile does not say 
that it is his sweetheart, but he is just too much 
of a Parisian to deny it altogether. So he answers 
neither " yea " nor " nay," but jocularly asks 
his friends to admire him, and they admire him 



A FRENCH SOLDIER'S MOTHER 279 

on every note of the scale and from every point 
of view. 

• A year afterwards Emile gets into serious 
trouble, but through no fault of his own. He 
is an eleve brigadier (or lance-corporal), and a 
comrade, also an eleve brigadier, steals a docu- 
ment from the office of the regiment, where both 
are employed as clerks, and is caught red-handed. 
The thief, a silly youth whose brain has been 
addled by reading the endless adventures of 
" Nick Carter," and similar American trash, sold 
in illustrated penny numbers, not only denounces 
himself as a spy in the pay of a foreign Govern- 
ment, but accuses Emile of being his accomplice. 
The stolen document is of no value, the whole 
story is the invention of a hysterical idiot, and 
Emile' s innocence is, after an elaborate inquiry, 
made clear. But he has spent three weeks in 
prison, and when he is sent back, without 
apology or compensation, to his regiment, he 
finds that he is, as French soldiers say, consigne 
— there is a black mark against him, his 
superiors look upon him with suspicion. The 
fact is that the prosecutor, the military juge 
instructeur, who had the case in hand, was con- 
vinced from the beginning that Emile, together 
perhaps with his mother, was the chief mover 
in a vast system of espionage, with ramifications 



28o SENSATIONS OF PARIS 

all over the world, and its centre in Berlin, and, 
having hoped to make the great hit of his life 
by unravelling this black conspiracy, he is dis- 
appointed with the result, and therefore deeply 
displeased with Emile. Emile may change into 
another regiment, but the ban, the consigne, 
will follow him wherever he goes. 

The Colonel is in a bad temper when Emile, 
duly introduced by his Sergeant, respectfully 
asks for a month's leave to visit his mother, in 
order to console her for his long silence and to 
re-establish his health, broken by confinement. 
Gazing in wrath at Emile' s rosy cheeks, the 
Colonel roars : " 111, you say ! Clear out ! You 
have already been absent from your duties too 
long, and if I hear any more nonsense from you, 
you shall be punished severely." The conse- 
quence is that Emile has a bad attack of what 
in French military slang is called le cafard. A 
cafardis a black-beetle, and why the word should 
be employed to designate an odd mental, or, 
more strictly speaking, moral, malady peculiar 
to soldiers has never been clearly explained. 
The symptoms of the cafard combine the after- 
effects of too much to drink, with a touch of 
ambulatory mania, or mad longing to bolt. 
That night Emile, who has a permission de 
minuit (leave till midnight), does not return to 




THE VIEW FROM NOTRE DAME ALONG THE SEINE, WITH ITS 
SPARKLING BRIDGES 



To face page 28 



A FRENCH SOLDIER'S MOTHER 281 

the barracks. Six days he spends in riotous 
living in Paris with his old chum Chariot ; on 
the seventh (for such is the rule in the French 
Army) he is notified to the police authorities as 
a deserter. He no longer dares to seek out his 
mother in the little flat at Montmartre, for that 
is the place where, before all others, the police 
will be on the look-out for him. 

" But to-morrow," says Emile to himself, " is 
Sunday, and mother will be at the cemetery. 
It will be quite safe to meet her there." So he 
sends a message to her by Chariot, who has in- 
structions to tell her just as much as may be 
wise. " Bear in mind," he says, " she is a bit 
excitable." Chariot's preamble is in the nature 
of circumlocution, but he ends by telling Jeanne 
all he knows, and a little more. " He's a good 
fellow all the same," says Chariot, when he sees 
in the blazing eyes and white face of the mother 
the terrible effect of his story. " Of course, it's 
no joke what he's done. Sacred Emile ! A 
very bad joke, anyway. He did not know when 
he was well off. Sacred Emile !" 

At the cemetery Madame Duvernoy is dressed 
in the deep mourning she always wears when 
she visits the Sergeant's grave. Her face is 
buried in her hands. At first she does little 
but weep and shake her head. 



282 SENSATIONS OF PARIS 

" Tell me everything," the mother insists, as 
if she did not already know all. 

" They treated me with injustice, mother," 
says Emile, '' and I cannot stand that !" 

'* There is much injustice in the world," sobs 
his mother. '* The world isn't perfect." 

" It's no good going back now to the regi- 
ment ; it would be folly," says Emile. 

The mother nods her head violently in con- 
tradiction. '' Thou must — thou must go back, 
whatever happens ! It's thy duty, my little 
Emile. Thy honour bids thee. Thou must 
submit to thy punishment like a brave lad." 

Emile (after a pause) : *' Mother, I am leaving 
for Brussels to-night. There's the ticket to be 
bought. Canst thou give me some money — just 
a little ? With ten francs " 

The mother : " Help thee to run away ? 
Thou knowest not what thou askest, my poor 
Emile. Then I should be as bad as thou art. 
The innocent dead one, who is lying here, would 
rise from the grave to strangle us both if he 
could know that I had helped thee to desert 
from the army, to betray thy country, to break 
thy word of honour. Oh, mon Dieu, mon Dieu, 
the honour that he held so dear !" 

" Mother," insists the lad in a hoarse whisper, 
"if I go back it is the conseil de guerre (court- 



A FRENCH SOLDIER'S MOTHER 283 

martial) that will judge me. / have been absent 
six whole days. Do you hear ? Six whole days ! 
I am a deserter, and they will have no pity. 
It is because they have acted unjustly towards 
me that they will have no pity, for never will 
they admit themselves to have been in the 
wrong. There is a black mark against me. I 
am consigns, and so it's biribi for me," 

Biribi ! The word strikes straight to the 
mother's heart. Pere Cherubin's widow feels 
an icy thrill through all her veins. '' Yes, 
mother," repeats Emile, seeing the advantage 
he has gained — " biribi .'" 

Jeanne withdraws her hand from her face, 
which is swollen and reddened with tears. In 
a second her mind has been made up. Her 
hand creeps to her pocket, from which she 
takes out the old purse that Emile knows so 
well, and thrusts it into his hand. Two gold 
pieces are inside it — a twenty-franc and a ten- 
franc piece. She has brought them with her. 

It dawns on the lad that the quarter-day is 
approaching. Those two sacred louis d'or ! 
" Mother," cries Emile in a choked voice, and 
stooping (for she has sunk to a sitting posture 
on the grave), he tries to fold her in his arms, 
to kiss her, " this is too much ! Mother, for- 
give me. I will go back if thou willst." 



284 SENSATIONS OF PARIS 

" Va-t'en ! Va-t'en !" she cries in agony, 
and pushes him from her. " Be off ! be off !" 

" Mother, let me kiss you — perhaps it is for 
the last time !" 

As Emile bends down, the criniere of his 
helmet — her hair — has swept his mother's tear- 
riven cheek. " Thou art killing me — thou art 
killing me !" she gasps. *' Oh, my son, my son !" 

Violently, with a revulsion of horror, she frees 
herself from his embrace. " Va-t'en ! Va-t'en !" 
He looks wildly about him, then slinks away. 
And prone upon Sergeant Duvernoy's grave lies 
the poor widow, a pitiful figure, with her hair 
cut short like a boy's, weeping out her heart. 



INDEX 



AbBAYE DES BoIS, 201 

Academicians, 72 
Academy set, the, 151 
Acrobats, 29 
Ambassadors, 72 
American picture-buyers, 

155 
American wives, 153 
American woman, tlie, 150 
Ancien regime, the, 157 
Architects, French, 180 
Arts, Pont des, 171 
Ault, le Bourg d', 31 
Auteuil, 50, 124, 251 

Bachelor woman, a, 113 

Bagneux, 38 

Balzac, 246 

Beguin, a, 36 

Bellevue, 164 

Bells, ringing of, 204 

Bercy, wine depot at, 126 

Berlin, uniformity of, 158 

Berton, Rue, 166 

Bievre, la, 241 

" Biribi," 265 

Bizy, 236 

Black Cat, the, 147 

Blanche, Place, 173 

Boileau, 251 

Bonne A toutes mains, 177 

Boston baked beans, 146 

Bottling, art of, 44 

Boulogne, Bois de, 50 



Boulogne, Bois de, cemetery 

in, 253 
Bracquemond, M. Felix, 

Braque, Rue, iii 
Brebant's, 212 
Brittany, colour of, 58 
Bryan, Mr., 217 
Buttes Chaumont, 203 

Cabinet Ministers, 72 
Cabman, the Paris, 118 
Cabourg, Cafard, le, 281 
Cafe Anglais, 211 
Cafe waiters, 115 
Careme, 220 

Carignan, Princesse de, 251 
Cassette, Rue, 165 
Castiglione, Comtesse de, 

220 
Catacombs, the, 198 
Catholic Institute, the, 165 
Cat zone, 200 
Central Markets, the, 125 
Chair-mender, the, 206 
Champs Elysees, the, 125 
Chantal, Ste Jeanne de, 

259 

Chanteurs de complaintes, 

209 
Charenton, 57 
Chateaubriand, 95 
Chateaubriand at Aulnay, 

260 



285 



286 



INDEX 



Chauvin, Monsieur, 133 
Choiseul-Praslin, Due de, 

252 
Clichy, Rue de, 174 
Cliques, 151 
Clochettes, les, 232 
Cobbles, 167 
College Chaptal, 177 
Colonialism, 76 
Colour, processional, 127 
Comedie Frangaise, the, 92 
" Corniche Normande," the 

183 
Corvisant, 245 
Cowslips, 228 
Crecy-en-Brie, 156 
Criniere defemme, 277 

Daffodils, 229 
Daudet, Alphonse, 80 
Dead Rat, the, 147 
Deptford Creek, 63 
Diablerie, 121 
Dog zone, 200 
Duglere, 221 

£cole des Beaux-Arts, 156 
Ecole de Droit, 92 
Etiolles, village of, 231 
European Quarter, the, 173 

Figuier, Rue du, 256 
Fleurus, Rue de, 170 
Franklin, Benjamin, 142 
French dressmakers, 150 

Gaiete Rochechouart, 275 
Galliffet, Marquis de, 219 
Gambetta, 134 
Gand, Boulevard de, 19 
Giverny, 156 
Gobelin tapestry, 147 
Goncourt, Edmond de, 254 
Gramont-Caderousse, Due 
de, 22 



Grand Seize, the, 217 
Green, Miss Grace, 114 
Grisette, the, 235 
Guide, the, 102 
Guimard, la, 254 

Hawkers' hods, 232 
Home, le, 227 
Honfleur, 59 
Hospitalieres de St. Thomas, 

Convent of, 257 
Humanite, I', 134 
Hyde, J. H., 74 
Hygiene, mysteries of, 154 

Institut Oceanographique, 

260 
Invalides, the, 54 
Itahe, Boulevard d', 240 
Italiens, Boulevard des, 19 
Ivry, 242 

Jack, coupes, 15 
Jaures, M., 134 
Jews, 152 

Kippers, British, 103 
Kleinstaedtigkeit, 79 

Lafayette, Rue, 127 
Lajeimesse, Ernest, 25 
Longchamp, Abbey of, 254 
London, colour of, 60 
London, lights of, 63 
Louis XIV., 99 
Luxembourg, the, 21 

" Mail-coach," the, 124 
Maison Doree, 211 
Maitre-tonnelier, a, 37 
Manners, French, 96 
Marchand de piaisir, 206 
Marie Antoinette, 126 
Marie de Medicis's fountain, 
193 



INDEX 



287 



Marne, the, 57 
Marne, tour de la, 187 
Maternite Hospital, the, 268 
May Day, 236 
Menage, femme de, 269 
Metegue, le, 76 
Midinette, the, 235 
Moliere, 252 
Moliere's house, 250 
Monaco, Prince of, 260 
Monomes, 129 
Montmartre, 30 
Montorgueil, Rue, 18 
Morgue, the, 105 
Mouhn Rouge, the, 102 
Muguet, Fete du, 233 
Mussels, 184 

Nesles-la-Vallee, 156 
Neuilly, 48 

Newspapers, French, 136 
Noce, the, 48 
Normandy, colour of, 58 
Northern Railway Station, 

the, 175 
Notre Dame, 54 

Odour, the Suburban, 79 
" Old Glory," 157 
Orleans, Due d', 139 
O'Shaughnessy, Mr., no 

Paint, world of, 155 
Palais de Justice, 162 
Palais Royal, 17 
Pantheon, the, 54 
Papal Nuncio, the, 69 
Paris, colour of, 60 
Paris, floods in, 64 
Paris, foreigner in, 66 
Paris, Ghetto of, 256 
Paris, heart of, 60 
Paris, mud of, 59 
Paris, Old, 241 
Paris, panorama of, 55 



Paris, smart set of, 151 
Paris, throat of, 20 
Paris, University of, 91 
Parisine, 75 
Passy, Quai de, 161 
Pave, le haul du, 166 
Pearl, Cora, 23 
Penseur, the, 164 
Pere Goriot, le, 93 
Pcyre, Aine, 244 
Picardy, colour of, 58 
Place des Vosges, 17, 85 
Plumber, the, 206 
Politeness, art of, 98 
Pompadour, Marquise de, 

231 
Poppy, skirt-dance of, 225 
Pot-au-feu, the, 82 
Poubelles, 34 
Primrose, 236 
Protestants, 152 

Quatre saisons, marchands 
de, 270 

Rabelais, last home of, 257 
Rag-pickers, 34, 149 
Rameaux, Les, 239 
Raspail, Boulevard, 199 
Richeheu, Due de, 99 
Rochefort, Henri, 76 
Rodin, 61, 224 
Rouen, mud of, 59 

Sacre Coeur, the, 32, 52 

Sainte-Adresse, 181 

St. Cloud, 236 

St. Denis, Royal, 54 

St. Germain, Faubourg, 17 

St. Germain, I'Auxerrois, 91 

St. Honore, Faubourg, 17 

St. Michel, Dames de, 258 

St. Paul, Hotel, 256 

St. Severin, 91 

St. Sulpice, 54 



288 



INDEX 



St. Vincent de Paul, 54 
Salle des Pas-Perdus, 89 
Seine, the, 57 
Seine's robe, the, 59 
Senart, forest of, 229 
Sens, Hotel de, 255 
Sevigne, Madame de, 259 
Shutters, 169 
Smell, the provincial, 78 
Sorbonne, 21 
Sourdeval, M. de, 214 
Spheres, music of, 53 
Stair, Lord, 99 
Street musicians, 208 
Stuart Merrill, 77 

Tapissieres, 107 
Tempo, the French, 117 
Ternes, the, 18 
Thackeray, iii 
Times, size of, 132 
Tortoni, 15 
Tournefort, Rue, 245 



Tricolour, the, 131 
Trilby, iii 

Ulbach, 243 

Vaucresson, woods of, 237 
Vauquer, the Maison, 93, 

246 
Vendome Column, the, 86 
Venus, Temple of, 254 
Vergennes, Marquis de, 11 1 
Viele-Grifhn, yy 
Ville d'Avray, 238 
Vincennes, Bois de, 51 
Vins ordinaires, 44 
Violette de Paris, la vraie, 237 
Voiture d galerie, 189 
Voltaire, smile of, 161 
Vrau, M., 138 

Wastefulness, American, 148 
" Watt-men," 123 
Whips, cracking of, 204 



J 



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